You think the housing bust's done you wrong? Pity the poor banks and home builders.

We spare little sympathy for these businesses. They triggered the explosion that demolished the economy, didn't they? They overbuilt, overcharged, overlent and underperformed. And left us with the cleanup bills.

But the rise and fall of Tampa Bay's housing and banking industries has been shocking. The gods of commerce have been vindictive. The first two weeks of 2010 have brought little but bad news:

BUILDERS: Tampa's Metrostudy reported this week that new home starts have declined 83 percent in four years. Back in 2005, when speculators were immersed in their "I'll take five homes, please" mania, Tampa Bay housing starts exceeded 21,000. Last year local builders barely scraped up 3,500 buyers.

Luxury home builders took a double hit. Sales in the 3,500-square-foot-plus category have dribbled down to near nothing. And demographics don't look good for a quick turnaround. Baby boomer retirees, the first of which turn 65 next year, are in a downsizing mood.

How did builder/developers' land-buying gambles during the housing boom pay off? Horribly. Tampa land broker Bill Eshenbaugh said builders that bought Pasco and Hillsborough County orange groves and ranches at the price peak are dumping them for a fifth of what they paid.

It wasn't all the builders' fault. They learned belatedly that Tampa Bay job creation numbers - data from which they projected potential home buyers - were tainted. Thousands of jobs were inaccurately credited to Tampa Bay's column because staffing firms serving all of Florida were based in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater.

BANKS: We've read about the failed lenders in Florida like Colonial Bank, First State Bank and BankUnited. And we gagged when we realized Washington's banking rescue would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. But that doesn't mean bankers welcomed the new year by lighting $10 cigars with rolled up hundreds.

In 2009, 62,000 Tampa Bay properties received foreclosure notices. Behind almost every foreclosure was a hard-pressed lender. Just last week a BB&T executive from Tampa estimated the average foreclosure took six to 18 months to process at a cost of $20,000 to $30,000 in legal fees. That's not counting thousands of dollars in lost interest payments.

Banks were dragooned into the government's Making Home Affordable program, forcing them, sometimes reluctantly, to slash mortgage rates for troubled homeowners. Such meddling in the market has become so commonplace, we forget that each modified home loan is actually a contract torn to shreds.

I know how I'd feel if I'd sold my car to a guy promising $6,000 and was forced to accept a take-it-or-leave-it offer of $4,000. From a banker's perspective, that muscle-bound bag man is the federal government.

Make no mistake about it, Tampa Bay builders and bankers soared too close to the sun and burned off their wings. But it's smart to remember that we lie in the debris field. Sheer self-interest demands we loan them a parachute.