It may not be who you think it is. Many mutual fund investors have heard of the Investment Company Institute or ICI. If you think that this Washington based group is there on your behalf, lobbying for investor's rights and protections, you would be wrong. This group works for the fund companies.

At second glance, you might think that the House Finance Committee chaired by Michael Oxley, R Ohio, is there to protect and serve the interest of investors. You would also be wrong.

The ICI has failed to cozy up to the Republican Senator and as result, he has launched a study into the mutual fund industry's participation in the tech bubble that imploded many a fund holder's portfolios. But is he doing this on behalf on the voting investor or because the ICI doesn't have a Republican lobbyist on staff?

First reported in the Washington Post, this development has come to the attention of the Congressional ethics committee. All Sen. Oxley wants, apparently, is Republicans in top paying lobbyist jobs. There is actually a group that investigates party affiliations for the Republicans, giving them leverage over who they do business with.

In the meantime, the undercurrent in Social Security remains the same. The agenda, quietly being pushed from inside the House Finance Committee, is to open the agency to private investments. This, according to some, would benefit the big fund families such as Vanguard and Fidelity, and the President's economic roundtable friend, Charles Schwab.

But the ICI has other, deeper troubles than their failure to hire Republicans. Many industry members have shown little satisfaction with the efforts of the group to get the "loss carry forward" tax law revamped. The way this law works is simple. If a mutual fund has losses in any given year, those losses can only be written off against capital gains for eight years. After that, those losses disappear. The mutuals fund industry wants the ability to write off these losses extended indefinitely. This would be a significant plus to investors.

Your money may be less important to these two watchdog groups than you may have realized.

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