Joshua Heckathorn

Home / Author / Joshua Heckathorn
Joshua Heckathorn's picture
Joshua Heckathorn

Joshua Heckathorn is a credit expert and has been featured on CNNMoney, FOX Business, Yahoo Finance, The Street, and many other national publications during the past twenty years.  He received a Bachelor of Science in Management (Finance) from Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Business and earned his MBA from Seattle University.

Visit 's Google Plus profile for more.

Recent Blogs

What the Sam Hill is a Credit Default Swap?

October 19th, 2008 by Joshua Heckathorn

If you’re paying attention at all to our current economic crisis, then you’ve probably heard the term “credit default swap (CDS)” enough to at least make you wonder what it is. Most recently, credit default swaps played a vital role in the federal government’s decision to bail out AIG, since they determined that a huge chain of failures across the international financial system might occur if AIG were to fail and default on the swaps it sold. Must be a big deal, right? They are.

What Will Become of the Old "Zip-Zap" Machine?

September 29th, 2008 by Joshua Heckathorn

In yet another effort to cut the cost of card issuance and increase consumer activation and usage, Visa announced last week "it will begin supporting the issuance of unembossed credit cards in the U.S. for Visa consumer debit, business debit, and consumer credit cards." I'm not sure what the world will be like without textured credit cards, but I suspect things will not change too much.

Economic Crisis: Perspective Is Everything

September 21st, 2008 by Joshua Heckathorn

Having worked at the World Trade Center, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and one of the country’s largest insurance firms, I feel very connected to many of the institutions and events that are in the news every day. I never could have imagined the changes the financial industry has experienced over the last seven years, and, with this most recent economic crisis, I know that many are wondering, “What in the world is going on” and “How does it affect me?” Let me first say that despite what the media would have you believe, we have seen this before and we will get through it.

Pages