While Americans may be complaining about rising gasoline prices and expressing their growing displeasure via plummeting consumer  confidence surveys, they’ve not stopped spending money as the Commerce Department reported(.pdf) that retail sales rose for the ninth straight month in March, up 0.4 percent after an increase of 1.1 percent in February.

Yes, gasoline station sales surged, up another 2.6 percent in March and now almost 17 percent higher than a year ago, but other gains were broad based including notable improvements in housing related categories.

Furniture & home furnishing stores saw sales rise by 3.6 percent and building material & garden equipment retailers reported a gain of 2.2 percent, both of these groups sporting respectable year-over-year gains of 2.7 percent and 5.0 percent, respectively.

Auto sales were down 1.7 percent last month, but this follows many months of gains. Excluding autos,  sales gained 0.8 percent and, excluding both autos and gasoline, March sales were up 0.6 percent after rising 0.9 percent in February. One important caveat here is that these figures are not adjusted for inflation, so, as is the case for gasoline, some of the sales gains in other categories can be attributed to higher prices.

That sucking sound you hear is the sound of soaring gasoline prices crushing consumer confidence – the lifeblood of the global economy for more than a generation – and this Gallup poll provides one more data point on how quickly things are changing.

The only good news is that the rich don’t feel as bad as the poor (of course, that’s not good news if you’re the latter), the percentage of upper-income Americans saying the economy is getting better down from 50 percent in January to 41 percent in March while optimism amongst the lower- and middle-income Americans fell from 40 percent to 32 percent.

Combined with the last two sharply lower bi-monthly readings for the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index and a string of weekly Gallup Surveys showing a quickly souring mood of the American consumer, today’s report of plunging consumer confidence from the Conference Board makes it a hat trick.

More importantly, one-year inflation expectations soared, from 5.6 percent to 6.7 percent!

The prospect of rising prices and little or no income growth will sap anyone’s confidence as the Conference Board survey saw its sharpest one-month decline in over a year, falling from a revised 72.0 in February to 63.4 in March.

Despite optimism for another good jobs report on Friday, the assessment of the labor market by respondents to this survey dipped from the month before, those saying that  jobs are “hard to get” rising from 44.4 percent to 44.6 percent while those saying that jobs are “plentiful” fell from 4.9 percent to 4.4 percent.

The Commerce Department reported that, in the third and final estimate for the fourth quarter of 2010, the U.S. economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.1 percent, up from the prior estimate of 2.8 percent. The revision was largely due to an upward revision to inventory investment and business investment.

After contracting 2.6 percent in 2009, the economy expanded 2.9 percent in 2010, its best performance in five years, and attention now turns to the advance estimate for Q1 GDP growth to be reported in late-April. Consumer spending surged late last year, combining with a big increase in net exports to drive growth, however, these trends may be fading as rising energy prices sap confidence and begin to impact personal consumption.

Not that it necessarily matters all that much, since the engine of  economic growth as we’ve come to know it in the U.S. – consumer spending – often goes in the opposite direction of the trend in consumer confidence, but Gallup reports that the mood of the public has now reached its lowest level of the year as indicated below. Interestingly, the “expectations” index is worse than last year at this time while the “current conditions” index is better.

As noted here earlier in the month, the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index registered its sharpest decline since the financial crisis began in late-2008, so, high gas prices and other factors are clearly taking a toll. The final reading on consumer sentiment will be reported this Friday and, next week, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index will likely see a similar plunge from a month ago.