Here are a few concise tips to help you through this credit crunch. (Count on it lasting at least through 2009, and probably into 2010 if no other major events extend it.)

1. Use your credit, your cash is always good. Credit may be tight, but if you have credit lines and credit cards use them instead of your savings. (Just don’t get late on credit card payments. They’ll eat you alive).
2. Borrow if you can. That may seem to contradict tip #1, but if you can borrow, do it! Pay back the loan in a short time (six months). Think of the money you spend on interest as an investment in your credit rating.
3. Don’t over-extend or get cocky and cancel your credit line. If you’re in pretty good shape right now, be careful not to put yourself in a risky financial situation. Even if you don’t need it, hang on to your home equity credit line, if you have one. The bank has probably reduced your maximum because of depreciated home values, but that cushion could be mighty handy if you need it when other credit is tight. What’s more, canceling a loan with a good credit history can actually hurt your credit rating.
4. Don’t max out your credit line or your credit cards. It makes you look desperate—or careless—and now is not the time to have money people questioning your ability to pay
5. Keep your borrowings on lines of credit and credit cards at less than half of the available credit.
6. Don’t borrow short term for long term purposes.

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If what you do will work at home, make sure you have a home to work from. Telecommuting, home based jobs, and home based business opportunities all depend on space in your house, after all.

A second, far larger wave of mortgage defaults is building acccording to The International Herald Tribune.

One in every 171 households was in some stage of the foreclosure process, an increase of 121 percent from a year earlier, RealtyTrac Inc., a real estate database firm, said last week in a statement.

After two years of upward spiraling defaults, the problems with mortgages made to people with weak, or subprime, credit are showing the first, tentative signs of leveling off.

But with the U.S. economy struggling, homeowners with better credit are now falling behind on their payments in growing numbers. The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A, or alt-A, mortgages, quadrupled to 12% in April from a year earlier.

Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7% in that time.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, on CNBC said he sees a severe recession that on the economic horizon that might last until the middle of next year, with the total losses becoming as much as $2 - $3 trillion.

What’s the question? Read on.

The worst housing slump since the Great Depression is getting worse. Mortgage delinquencies are still going up. Credit is still getting tighter.

Fannie Mac owns or insures a quarter of all U.S. mortgages, and they saw credit losses go up 66 percent to $5.3 billion. Freddie Mac also had greater losses than analysts anticipated. The worst part is the companies aren’t prepared for what we’re heading into. This thing is going to get worse. and in the last year Fannie and Freddie stocks have plummeted over 85%.

So what are they going to do? Purchase fewer loans and increase mortgage guarantee fees, making mortgages more difficult to obtain just as the government is leaning on them to revive the housing market and keep the economy out of recession.

What can you do? Now is time to look carefully for ways to save and for ways to be more productive. Telecommuting is one method to do both.

Telecommuting, we’ve written here repeatedly, can single-handedly do more to solve our energy crisis than all the other proposed measures combined. Transportation accounts for 70% of the oil we consume in the U.S.

Regardless of how we do it, we need to find a way to become independent of oil as an energy source. There’s a perfect storm of oil problems brewing. Let me describe how it develops and the havoc it wreaks when it hits. And it will.

First, the demand for energy grows. The world is consuming 10 billion liters a day right now. China, India and Asia are booming and demand is skyrocketing.

Then we discover that supply is drying up, or more accurately supply has been used up. Twenty years ago 15 oil fields produced more than 1 million barrles a day. Now there are four. Some oil fields in the U.S. and North Sea have been pumped dry, and fewer countries are producing it. More than half the world’s oil comes from just seven countries (Saudi Arabia, Russia, U.S., Iran, China, Mexico, and Canda in that order by production).

Then add some scullduggery by those countries. OPEC over the past two years, for example, has added Ecuador and Angola to their ranks to mask the decline in production by existing members. And what spare capacity oil producers have is gone as they cash in on soaring prices by extracting as much as they can.

Another example: someone has been hijacking tankers apparently just to learn how to operate them. A few years ago a ship was hijacked there, operated for several days by the hijackers, and then they left taking technical manuals. Why? Well imagine if you ran two of them together in the 1.7 mile wide Strait of Malacca, and they set the whole mess on fire.

Then something or someone disrupts things. An extraordinary hurriance season or winter cripples distribution or spikes demand. Or explosives blow up a pipeline, processing or distribution center. Or Gulf War III (or is it IV?) closes the Strait of Hormuz or Strait of Malacca, or shuts down the Saudia Arabian processing facility in Abqaiq or the Ras Tanura off-shore oil facility that handles 10% of the world oil. (Let’s assume the latter happens, to be not so hypothetical, in September/October right before the election so Republicans can ensure a former fighter pilot, not a ‘let’s talk’ presidential candidate, gets elected in a predictable spurt of nationalism.)

Then add a psychological avalanche. Countries, companies and individuals see supplies dwindling. The press, every willing to capitalize on bad news whips the issue into a worldwide crisis. Panic buying degenerates into a global grab, armed and otherwise, for oil. Oil prices blow past $300 a barrel and keep climbing.

Then the oil runs out. Terrorist attacks close production and distribution. Emergency reserves in the U.S. are depleted (we only have a 60 day supply—in salt caverns 2000 feet underground near the Gulf of Mexico.) When the oil runs out commerce stops. International trade stops. Workers can’t drive to work. Groceries don’t move from fields to stores. And then . . . ?

Anyone care to explain why we don’t have a mission-to-the-moon-style national priority to declare independence from oil? Why don’t we at the very least have a national telecommuting program?

Nevermind global warming.