The Census Bureau said retail and food services sales climbed 0.4 percent to $366.4 billion. Retail sales alone climbed 0.5 percent, 9.6 percent higher than last year. (The bureau also nudged the February-to-March estimate up.) Gasoline station sales climbed nearly a third year-on-year, and motor vehicle sales climbed 15.1 percent.

The sector that showed the strongest month-to-month advance was building material and garden supplies (at 6.9 percent growth), with more moderate growth in motor vehicles, health and personal care stores, gas stations and restaurants. Sectors weakening included furniture, electronics, grocery stores, clothing stores, sporting goods and department stores.

Dollar-wise, much of the retail sales growth has depended on rising gas prices and new purchases of cars. Still, most sectors show decent year-on-year growth, implying that consumers are simply consuming more, helping to fuel the recovery.

One reason for concerns that any possible recovery may be less than robust is the continuing slowdown in consumer spending. And now there’s more evidence consumers aren’t going to be pulling out their wallets anytime soon and spending their way into an economic recovery. Via Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis, The Associated press reports that shoppers are chickening out in the checkout lines, leaving behind items they had planned on buying, just a short time earlier.

They’re leaving sweaters in the dress department, dumping cookies near the grocery cashier and waiting until the last minute to weigh wants versus needs. Online, shoppers are abandoning their virtual carts as they search for better deals.

People “want to be in the act of shopping, but they don’t want to be in the act of buying,” said Joel Bines, a director at AlixPartners, a turnaround consultant.

It’s more bad news for stores, of course.

It means more lost sales for stores at a time when there are already fewer customers because of the recession. For bricks-and-mortar shops already working with fewer staff, it also means more work because orphaned items have to be restocked.

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but Burt P. Flickinger III, a retail consultant, estimates that in 25 percent of shoppers’ trips to the store, they’re ditching at least one item. In the recession of the early 1990s, it was 15 to 20 percent. In good times, it’s more like 10 percent.

Maybe you’ve done this yourself — you’ve gotten to the checkout line only to think twice, grab something from your basket, and dump it somewhere nearby. As the AP story points out, actual numbers on this trend are hard to come by. But think about it for a moment, and it makes sense — if you’re serious about cutting back on spending, you make these kinds of moves. And it’s also a sign of how much things have changed in the consumer psyche. Remember retail therapy? Shop until you drop? You don’t see those kinds of terms thrown around as much anymore. Shopping as entertainment just isn’t what it used to be, when you’ve had your hours at your job reduced or your neighbor’s house is in foreclosure.

With fears of a jobless recovery looming out there, it’s only logical that the latest consumer shopping trend would be leaving things behind — the stuff no one really needed in the first place.

Madoff’s tickets were for two seats in the second row behind home plate in the Delta Club Platinum section at the new Citi Field. They had a face value of about $80,191, or $295 to $695 per single ticket.

Trustee Irving Picard has worked out a deal with the Mets to exchange Madoff’s seats for two less expensive ones a few sections over and a few rows back with a face value of $60,750.

The trustee would get about $20,000 for the difference between the platinum and gold seats, Vanderwal said in court.

Madoff’s tickets for Monday night’s first Mets home game of the season against the San Diego Padres were sold for $7,500 on eBay (EBAY.O) on Sunday. The Mets lost 6-5.

His tickets for the rest of the season will now be made available for bidding.

This should be some small consolation for Mets fans who lost their savings to Madoff.

From Financial Armageddon:

Those on the other side of the counter are also seeing the writing on the wall — better late than never, I guess — and are starting to make structural adjustments of their own.

Among those adjustments are changes in prices and inventory, to adjust to the new frugality of consumers, according to a story from The Associated Press cited in the post:

J.Crew is working with its factories to adjust its prices on certain key items like ballet flats, which now start at $98 rather than $118. It’s also stocking fewer of its high-priced items like $1,300 leather trench coats. It’s cutting inventory and slashing expenses. Status denim brand Rock & Republic will ship a new Recession Collection this spring that runs about half the usual $200 price tag for its jeans. Even supermarket chain SuperValu Inc. has promised lower everyday prices on groceries and more promotions.

And here’s the outlook for those expensive jeans:

Michael Ball, founder and creative director of Rock & Republic, said he immediately lowered the prices of the company’s most expensive jeans in September before they hit the floors when the economy imploded. The premium line, which had been priced from $180 to $320, now peaks at $280. ”The days of the $300 jeans are gone,” Ball said. While other high-priced denim brands have been heavily discounted in recent months, he said he was able to avoid such heavy price cuts because of limited distribution that kept demand high. Still, given the new climate, Ball cut the number of styles and decided to offer a less expensive, cleaner look that features two styles for men and two styles for women. The line is priced from $128 to $132.

So goodbye to overpriced, ripped, and fake distressed denim. Maybe there are some upsides to this dowturn, after all.

From Bloomberg:

Regional mall vacancies rose to 7.1 percent last quarter from 6.6 percent in the third quarter. It was the highest vacancy rate since Reis began tracking regional malls in 2000, as well as the largest quarter-to-quarter jump in vacancies, according to New York-based Reis. More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Linens ‘n Things Inc. and Sharper Image Corp., filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008 as the credit squeeze and recession drained sales. Vacancies will rise further until the job market recovers, housing prices stabilize and lending resumes, restoring consumer confidence, said Reis.

You could rent “Clueless” these days and it would seem like a period piece. Empty stores at the mall also have a psychological effect – any shopper can see that things look bad, and that may make them leery of spending. Given the increase in consumer spending of the past two decades, that is probably a good thing in the long term. Plenty of people with too much credit card debt could stand a few more empty stores.

It’s true the recession might not go away anytime soon if we (wisely) choose not to spend our way out of it. But then we won’t have double-digit interest payments on our debt, either. The other upside would be that malls might lose their status as the place for pre-teens to hang out, thereby chipping away at the gloss of the shopping gods. There might not be a lot of pleasant memories to come from this economic downturn, but saying goodbye to the mall culture as a permanent fixture in young lives could be the rare bright spot.

“We have been selling coin banks really well,” said Laura Kellner at Kikkerland Design Inc. in New York City, whose stylish chrome pig is priced at $31.

Another retailer also said the pigs were popular:

“We definitely noticed a trend with the piggy banks,” said Erin Mara at Homebody, a design store in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC. ”People were very upfront about the need to save…the pig is very symbolic of that sentiment,” she said.

It’s certainly evidence of financial responsibility to save, something Americans haven’t exactly been doing over the past decade, with consumer spending climbing to record levels while the savings rate plunged. I guess increased sales of piggy banks could be seen as a new frugality among consumers.

Except… $31 for a chrome piggy bank? Are you kidding me? If you need a designer piggy bank to save you’ve got deeper problems. You could put that money in an envelope, store it in a drawer, and be $31 ahead in your savings goals.

If we’ve resorted to buying buying designer piggy banks from stylish boutiques to change our spending habits, I don’t think we’ve gotten the message yet.