It is worth taking an extended look at a new Forbes piece that showcases several companies who appear not to have a need to face the current credit crisis with too worrisome a countenance--who, in the magazine's words, "appear positioned to get through the borrowing crunch without too much pain."

Though this goes last on Forbes's list, in fact the type of company that it cites as sitting relatively pretty is, yup!, small businesses. The magazine speaks with the president of American Express's small business-serving unit Open--which, in case you hadn't noticed, is BizBox's sponsor--who points out that small business' being typically less leveraged compared to larger ones leaves them in a comparatively good position. (Michael Taylor made this argument on BizBox a few weeks ago.) “Entrepreneurs are nimble and have strategies in place to manage business challenges. They are decreasing investments, adjusting expansion plans to capital on-hand, cutting expenses and focusing on adapting to customer demand,” the president, Susan Sobbott, adds.

As for the large companies Forbes cites, we can extrapolate from some of the examples and derive some general lessons for how best to position yourself to survive a period during which borrowing will be incredibly difficult; in other cases, you can chalk the companies' enviable situations up to combinations of extreme luck and extreme skill.

Kohl's The "budget-friendly retailer" has continued with its plans to open several dozen new stores in 2008 and 2009. Lesson: as we've written before, discount to thrive during tough times (and don't forget to offer coupons!).

IBM The old giant--which was a tech company before you called them tech companies, yet has managed to remain in the game after the Silicon Valley boom--reports a secure fiscal situation despite a near-$200 billion annual balance sheet. Forbes has a company spokesperson swearing to a “very strong cash position, credit markets rate our credit profile highly, and that the company does not use overnight commercial paper markets." In other words, IBM isn't overleveraged, and you shouldn't be, either.

MetLife This seems like a surprising pick, since maybe the most spectacular corporate flameout of the past several months was that of AIG, MetLife's fellow insurance company. So what's keeping Snoopy's favorite business afloat? According to Forbes, the company says it's “financially sound and has high ratings from all of the major insurance ratings agencies” and is “fully able to meet all its obligations.” Probably it just played it smart and did not get enmeshed in partaking of credit default swaps against the defaults of bad loans and the securities made up of them--which was AIG's Waterloo.

Southwest Airlines This is a special case, of Southwest having possessed the foresight and savvy that probably deserves to be called "genius". Basically, it bet that the cost of fuel would rise, and won big. It hedged years ago by buying futures contracts that, essentially, allows it to buy about 70% of its fuel at a rate of $51 per barrel. By contrast, right now oil futures are trading slightly below $90 per barrel--and that price is, by leaps and bounds, the lowest it's been in months. So Southwest is paying significantly less for fuel than just about all of its competitors. Combine these lower costs with its pre-existing commitments to low fares, and you see Southwest able to underprice all of its competitors vastly. Those low prices would give it a leg up even in good times; in bad times, it's a checkmate move.

Calpine and Sun Healthcare Group Lesson: be an energy company or a healthcare company. You're talking about the two industries whose fortunes have gone into the stratosphere over the past few years. Incidentally, if you had a choice (which of course you don't--we all tend, and for good reason, do what we want and what we can, not what macroeconomic conditions tell us are best), we'd bet on healthcare, whose demand is only going to shoot up, over energy, whose long-term future is a bit less certain and which anyway is tied heavily to the unpredictable and erratic values of a few commodities.