Note: see BizBox's previous post for a discussion of whether the economy's dire straits are a particular advantage or disadvantage for small businesses.

The financial headlines this week threaten to turn small business owners into Chicken Littles. In fairness, the financial sky truly is falling - from the best and the brightest of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers down to the humble homeowners who live across the street from you. So we can cut people some slack for asking: is anyone truly safe?

The answer is: yes. In fact, most of us are safe.

The common denominator of the credit crisis of 2007 and 2008 can be summed up in one word: Debt. The mortgage crisis, for example, is a crisis of excessive debt burden at the homeowner level, which has compounded excessive debt at the Wall Street level.

And it is debt that distinguishes a small business like yours from the big boys. I can guarantee that Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do not have businesses that look like yours, because in recent years they typically operated with debt that exceeded their equity by between 20 and 50 times.

By contrast, there is no small business in the world that can get that much credit from their bank without committing borrowing fraud (in which case you've got bigger problems than being overleveraged). As a result of the structural fact that it is relatively difficult to get banks to lend to small businesses, and has been even more so for over a year now, it just so happens that most small businesses carry very little debt.

So you're probably "safe," at least as far as the credit crunch directly hurting you is concerned. (You're not, unfortunately, totally immune from the business cycle, unless your consumer base is located on a distant planet that is currently going through a period of robust growth.)

But there's more: now is actually a time for you to thrive. If your small business runs debt-free, the turmoil of the last year and a half is truly an opportunity. Why? Because cash is king for the next few years. And so if your lack of debt gives you the ability, for example, to extend limited but scarce and therefore valuable credit to customers, then that could be the factor that puts you on a fast track for growth.