Last week, HSH.com’s VP Keith Gumbinger was a guest on The Takeaway, a national radio morning news program.

On Monday, HSH VP Keith Gumbinger was the guest on Chicago’s WBBM Noon Business Hour. Mr. Gumbinger joined ‘Business Hour’s’ hosts Sherman Kaplan and Regine Schlesinger to talk about the current conditions in the home equity lending market.

Schlesinger led off the discussion by asking our VP if there’s more to the home equity lending problem than just falling home prices. “That’s kind of the linchpin for all the issues facing home equity lending we’ve seen,” said Gumbinger. Declining prices have wiped out the value of many homes, effectively erasing equity for some, while causing others to go underwater.

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Thousands of Americans are flooding mortgage lenders’ offices hoping to save money by refinancing their mortgage to a new lower rate.

Yet there are several refinancing fees that could end up costing you. SmartMoney.com has compiled four refinancing costs to look out for:

1. Processing Fees: While they are a given part of the refinancing process, Smart Money warns that “While charging an application fee of several hundred dollars is normal, adding several other charges for the same amount of work is not. Be sure to compare several lenders’ fees — and question anything that seems redundant.”

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Chances are there are a lot of you out there who have have purchased savings bonds in the past but have forgotten all about them. According to the Bureau of the Public Debt, there are 40 million matured Series E Savings Bonds still in circulation. The Treasury Department estimates the worth of these bonds purchased between 1941 and 1978 to be $16 billion.

So why has this easy source of cash been so under utilized? While many have been thought to be either destroyed or the property of the deceased, a main reason continues to be that holders wish to avoid paying taxes on the interest.

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From HSH’s Market Trends Newsletter:

October 3, 2008 — After an initial and shocking failure, elected representatives spent most of the week scurrying to come up with a “better” version of Treasury Secretary Paulson’s plan to use up to $700 billion in taxpayer funds to buy up bad mortgage and financial assets. In the end, the tab could run as high as $810 billion, with hopes that some of the assets can be resold back into the market for a profit. Of course, this assumes there will still be a market for them — or any market at all — when it’s time to sell them.

It’s believed that with such a plan in place, credit spigots will begin to crack open to a greater degree, and perhaps they might. There’s no certainty there, either. Investors may simply shed bad assets in exchange for cash, invest the money in 100% guaranteed Treasury obligations, and swear off any form of risks for the foreseeable future.

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