Don't look at us. We didn't do it.

Pittsburghers, by and large, haven't aided and abetted the financial crisis. That may be cold comfort to those who just opened their quarterly 401(k) or IRA statements. What once seemed rock solid now seems more like a line from "Limbo Rock.''

How low can you go?

But it could be worse. In states where too many people bet long on real estate, they're taking a double-hit as the value of their home sinks along with their stock portfolios.

Here, it's less risky to buy. Prices are relatively stable. It turns out our sinking population and that standard critique of Pittsburgh -- a lack of "risk-takers'' -- is not entirely a bad thing. The housing bubble that started toppling the other financial dominoes never happened here, so nor has the foreclosure tsunami.

Saying this amid the crisis might be whistling past the graveyard, but the latest organization to provide evidence for Western Pennsylvanian stability is HotPads.com.

This map-based housing search service was founded a few years ago by a couple of Notre Dame roommates and it claims more than 200,000 active rental listings and 1.75 million homes for sale. Recently, it touted the 10 best and worst congressional districts for foreclosures.

Seven of the 10 hardest-hit districts are in California, two are in Nevada and one is in Florida. Call it coincidence, but two of the worst places are represented by the same household. Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack (Sonny Bono's widow) of Palm Springs, Calif., recently married Republican Rep. Connie Mack IV (great-grandson and namesake of the old baseball manager) of Florida's southern Gulf Coast.

Their districts are America's second- and fifth-worst for foreclosures. And you thought you had difficulty working out finances at your kitchen table.

Pennsylvania is in much better shape, and Western Pennsylvania better still. HotPads says the percentage of homes in foreclosure in Nevada is above 4.1 percent, in California and Arizona around 2.4 percent, and in Florida 1.5 percent. Pennsylvania is 28th on the list at 0.12 percent -- and every congressional district in Western Pennsylvania is below that.

Doug Pope, one of HotPads' co-founders, said, "I'd say definitely it's less risky [in Western Pennsylvania.] Prices are much more stable. [The price of a home] might drop but you're not going to lose 40 to 60 percent.''

In Democratic Rep. Jason Altimire's suburban district the foreclosure rate is 0.11; in Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle's Pittsburgh-based district it's 0.09; Upper St. Clair Republican Rep. Tim Murphy's sprawling district is at 0.07 and Republican Rep. Phil English's northwestern Pennsylvania district is 0.02. All are in the nation's upper half in avoiding foreclosures. Further east, Republican Rep. Bill Shuster's Blair County district is America's fifth best.

Such stability may come from hard experience. Some say national unemployment could go as high as 8 percent. Chris Briem, the invaluable demographer at the University of Pittsburgh, put that number in perspective on his blog, Null Space:

"Just in the sense of 'we know that pain,' Beaver County hit 28 percent unemployment in January 1983. [That] is a rate many parts of the country would never peak at even during the depth of the Depression.

"I know that does not help anyone's 401(k), but it does get to the core of whatever makes the Pittsburgh psyche unique."

It's not a bad time to be the national capital of Staying Put either. Pennsylvania led all states in the 2000 Census with almost 23 percent of homeowners in the same house for at least 30 years. That's largely because we don't attract many newcomers; the national average for a three-decade home was 13.5 percent, and in Nevada it was just 4 percent.

The same Census suggests that in Pittsburgh, 41 percent of homes are unencumbered by any mortgage, compared with 30 percent nationwide.

We mostly skipped America's real estate bubble-blowing party. We weren't invited. We didn't, and still don't, have the population pressure to churn demand. But if it's an odd comfort in knowing we don't have far to fall, it's a comfort still.

Conventional wisdom is often exactly wrong. The same financial news networks that fueled the real estate and stock bubbles have been feeding an unholy panic.

We live in a place where people mostly have managed, and not always easily, to live within their means. Such thrift was synonymous with conservatism -- until the borrow-and-spend ethos took over.

Expect thrift to come back before the stock market soars, because, as plenty hereabouts know well, it has to.