It's a rainy spring morning and Tamara Ogier plants herself at a table in a Spartan room in the Atlanta federal courthouse, computer and tape recorder at hand, ready to hear another day's stories of financial ruin.

Couples facing foreclosure. Down-and-out real estate agents. Merchants who've shut their doors. All sit on pew-like benches, waiting to tell the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee how they ended up deep in debt.

"I understand the assumption that we're the guys in the black hats," Ogier said, but "there are a lot of times when I'm actually able to do a lot of good."

It's a sunny morning 745 miles away, as Jerry Miller tools along Iowa's back roads. At almost 75, he feels he needs to keep working just to keep pace even though he's not in debt. He wonders, too, if he'll have to foot the bill for people who couldn't manage their own money.

"I can't believe because they got themselves in this situation, it's falling on us to pay it back," he said, heading to the first pharmacy where he'll make deliveries this day. "Lord, you're going to set a college kid loose with a credit card? Buy a house that costs 10 times your salary?"

The nation is in a deep recession, there's no denying that: Unemployment is at its highest level in more than 25 years. The auto industry is on the skids. Foreclosure and for-sale signs are as common in some communities as street lights.

And more bleak days seem to be ahead.

Many private economists expect the monthly jobless rate will climb to 10 percent by the end of the year — it already has surpassed that level in states such as Michigan, South Carolina and Rhode Island.

The bankruptcy rate is rising, too. Nearly 1.2 million debtors filed for bankruptcy in the year period ending in April, according to federal court records collected and analyzed by The Associated Press. In March, nearly 131,000 sought bankruptcy protection — an increase of 46 percent over a year earlier.

Those are the numbers. Then there are the people.

This is the story of a single day, and how Americans spent those hours in the shadow of economic distress, from worried debtors in a Georgia courthouse to a prospective home buyer in Michigan to an Arizona contractor struggling to find jobs.

On this day, no one person typifies hard times: In California, it's a homeless Army Reservist who sleeps in his 17-year-old car. In South Carolina, it's an unemployed factory worker who finds comfort in prayer.

And in Greenwich, Conn., home to hedge-fund billionaires, it's David Rabin, who lost his $100,000 job last October as a senior vice president for a small financial services firm.

He spends part of his morning in his basement, job hunting online. A day earlier, he learned he didn't get a position recruiting members for a gym. That hurt.

"I didn't sleep a freakin' wink," he said. "If I don't fit that job, what the hell am I going to do?"

"You have no idea how humbling all this is," Rabin said. "It's extremely humbling. I'm ready to go to Stop & Shop and start bagging groceries."

"I've been in this situation before and I wasn't nearly as frightened," he added. "This is the Great Recession we're in."

NURSES STILL NEEDED

Watching Jim Juristy work, you wouldn't know we're in hard times.

A nursing supervisor in Morgantown, W.Va., Juristy will spend his 12-hour shift at Ruby Memorial Hospital trying to fill jobs, calling, cajoling and charming nurses to come to work.

Not only is Juristy in a relatively secure profession, but he lives in a thriving area (the county's jobless rate in March was a relatively low 4 percent), home of West Virginia University and some recession-proof employers.

A former coal miner, the 54-year-old Juristy made the unlikely transition in the mid-1990s after his mine closed.

"I figured I could adapt or become a dinosaur. And dinosaurs became extinct, so I thought I'd darn well better adapt," he said.

On this April morning when WVU Hospitals — which include Ruby Memorial — had 200 job openings, TV news is announcing higher-than-expected March unemployment rates.

But Juristy needs workers. He tells his wife, Stephanie, a part-time clerical worker at the hospital, to start calling contractors, a pool of nurses from Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia who work extra shifts.

NO OTHER OPTIONS

At the opposite end of the country, in Scottsdale, Ariz., 36-year-old Mark Zimmerman is struggling, too. The contractor's printer spits out an estimate for a project he never would have taken two years ago: replacing concrete blocks supporting a carport.

The numbers aren't pretty: Three days of labor. About $35 an hour for his workers. Another $250 in material. Zimmerman does some fast math on a handheld calculator. He gets 10 percent, so he'll make a meager $109.

"That doesn't cover me for anything — not my time sitting and putting the bid together, not my time driving out to go look at it," he said. "I'm actually losing money."

The downturn in construction has rippled across the Sun Belt, from Arizona to Florida, where the pawn shop is often the stop of last resort.

At 10:55 a.m, Tim Salyer, an unemployed construction worker, arrives at Best Value Jewelry and Pawn in Fort Pierce, proffering an acoustic guitar in a beat-up case. He lives with his mom, who just lost her job as a nurse.

"Trying to hang in there," he said.

Salyer pawns his guitar for $50. He'll need $62 to retrieve it.

"I played it all night last night, so hopefully I got it out of my system. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it back," he said with a heavy sigh.

TALES OF BANKRUPTCY

By late morning, Ogier, the Atlanta bankruptcy trustee, has wrapped up about 30 interviews.

She is a gentle-but-firm interrogator, sifting through the financial records of the debtors, looking for anything of value — a home, a car, a diamond ring — that can be sold to satisfy creditors.

A 40-year-old former accounting consultant tells Ogier in a near whisper that his clothes are all he owns. His business fell off last summer.

A Vietnamese couple who owned a hair and tanning salon explain, through a translator, they have a staggering $600,000 credit card debt. The husband was getting free credit cards in the mail, and using one to pay off the other.

These kinds of crushing debts are unimaginable to Miller, the frugal Iowan.

Miller said he really didn't have a choice about retirement, and needs the cash from his 15-hour-a-week job to pay for healthcare for himself and his wife, Barbara.

"You've got to have faith in the system," he said as he arrives home in Conrad, Iowa. "But can you tell me, where did all the money go?"

BIDDING ON MISFORTUNE

In the evening, Ballroom B at the DeVos Place convention center in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich., is humming with anticipation.

About 450 people are waiting to bid on nearly 75 foreclosed homes being auctioned off. For the right price, one family's misfortune can become another's American dream.

Marilyn Heidenfelder is hoping for a bargain. She has scouted out four possible homes for her 41-year-old daughter, who recently lost her house when her mortgage increased $350 a month.

Heidenfelder is willing to spend $20,000. But the first house she bids on goes for $105,000.

Three more homes she's interested in are sold within a half-hour. The cheapest one went for $45,000 — more than double her limit.

Shortly after 7 p.m., a disappointed Heidenfelder leaves with her $2,500 cashier's check — and without a home.

"There were too many people," she said. "It was too competitive."