Business

THE FED VS. CONGRESS

THERE appears to be much movement within the Federal Reserve to thwart pending legislation in Congress to rein in Ben Bernanke and his Board of Governors.

House Resolution 207, The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, has 254 co-sponsors with many members of the House Financial Services Committee — where the bill currently resides — signed on already.

In reaction, the Fed has hired its first lobbyist — Linda Robertson, who previously lobbied for Enron and whose ex-boss is former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — to counter the populist bill requesting that Congress be able to audit the Fed’s books. Robertson is schedule to start tomorrow.

In conjunction with the lobbyist effort, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is about to unleash an international ad campaign on behalf of the banking industry. Wall Street’s largest trade group, which is funded by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and others, will be placing ads stating that the financial markets must be seen as part of the solution to the current recession and not the cause.

Let’s not forget that these same Wall Street firms funding the campaign are also the stakeholders in the Federal Reserve, essentially Bernanke’s board of directors.

The new campaign is being run by the Brunswick Group in Washington headed by two former Treasury officials; Michele Davis, Paulson’s former spokeswoman, and Jim Wilkinson, his former chief of staff.

Apple issue

Apple and Nintendo have a Wii bit of a problem that may get a lot bigger.

This past week a small iPhone app publisher released “Mariolife,” a multiplayer adventure game that uses several “Super Mario Bros.” characters — without the permission of Apple’s portable-game rival Nintendo.

The company, Slava Bushtruk, is getting $2.99 a pop from an audience of millions. “Ostensibly, an Apple employee plays and approves every single iPhone game that hits the App Store, so they should be catching some of this stuff,” says Steve Palley, founder of the iPhone game-review site Slide To Play.

This isn’t the first time Apple milked one of Nintendo’s valuable licenses. Earlier this year the App Store had a perfect copy of “Duck Hunt,” Nintendo’s classic 1984 shooter.

It was available for days before Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but I do understand Nintendo’s position,” the Apple “Duck Hunt” creator told MacWorld magazine in February.

The “Mariolife” creators did not respond to The Post by press time, but via Twitter they said “[the] Mario image is going to be removed from the game very soon. All players will have their own avatar pictures.”

business@nypost.com