Brenda Amble, a title agent with Ticor Title in Bakersfield, California, will testify before the federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today in a hearing held in Bakersfield that began at 9 am PST.  Amble will offer testimony on the effect of the crisis on the title business and on homeowners.

Amble, a 42-year veteran of the title industry, will participate in the last scheduled panel of the day, which will likely occur sometime Tuesday afternoon.

In her prepared statement, Amble laid out the effects of the housing crisis on her own company.  "When the market changed in 2006, I saw Ticor Title Company shrink from 4 offices with 88 employees to 1 office with 16 employees. We have also experienced several pay cuts with no furlough days given for reduced pay," Amble wrote, noting that other companies in the industry experienced similar effects. 

Amble also described various failures of federal mortgage modification programs in her testimony.  Amble's prepared statement can be found here.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, modeled after the 9-11 Commission, was created by Congress to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States."  The Commission is chaired by former Los Angeles Mayor Phil Angelides. 

The Commission's effectiveness has been questioned in recent press reports due to high attrition rates among senior staff  and charges of conflicts of interest on the part of some commissioners.  It will release its final report this December.

The hearing can be watched live on the web at http://fcic.gov/watch/