And this year's holiday sales boost is likely to be slim. The consumer confidence index, which predicts spending levels, slid to an all-time low of 38 last month, compared with 61.4 in September. The figure was well below analyst predictions and nowhere near last year's October confidence index of 95.2.
"It's difficult," said Valentino, who nonetheless holds out faith that small businesses eventually will help spur spending.
Still, construction companies, clothing retailers, travel agents, marinas and other small firms are struggling. It's a long list.
"When people are losing their homes, they're not buying homes, they're not going on trips, they're not putting in new decks, not putting in carpet," Shaw said. "It's like dropping a rock into a pond and watching the ripples."
Because the Ocean City condo market dried up, a decorator who had been in business for 12 years went bankrupt, Shaw said.
Lack of demand contributed to the end of Kathleen Kubicki's Searise Inc. as well. Her Eastern Shore wicker furniture business was launched by a different owner in 2000. Kubicki took over in 2006, according to bankruptcy records. A string of bad luck - an eviction, the loss of a small-business loan - sent the company spiraling, and the economy finished it. She tried to convert it into an Internet operation but couldn't make a go of it, in part because of "the contracting nature of the economy," according to a court filing.
That led her to hire Shaw and later to "reluctantly" switch from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, which would have allowed the business to reorganize, to a Chapter 7 filing, shutting it down. Shaw said she would pass along an interview request, but the message was never returned.
Some, such as John W. Hall Jr., owner of Jack Hall Inc., a College Park construction business, are sick of the subject.
"We don't need any more publicity about it," Hall said. He filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in September.
Creditors do not want to talk much either. Dance Explosion owed a Glen Burnie real estate management company $23,000, but no one there was willing to be interviewed. Joel L. Perrell Jr., a Baltimore bankruptcy lawyer, said creditors typically recover 10 percent to 15 percent of what they are owed.
Most people don't want to talk about bankruptcy, attorneys said. It's embarrassing, upsetting and often the hardest decision of a person's life. It usually comes after a long struggle, and it's often the end of a dream.
