White men continue to dominate the ranks of the federal workforce, while white women and Latinos hold fewer jobs than they should compared to their overall representation in the U.S. population. Of the 2.8 million federal workers, 55.9% were men and 44.1% were women last year (women make up a little more than half of all Americans). In terms of ethnic representation, whites make up 72.8% of the civilian work force and held 65.6% of federal positions, while blacks, 10.5% of the civilian work force held 18% of federal jobs, and Latino federal workers represented only 7.9%,of the federal work force even though they constitute 10.7% of civilian workers.

Banks continue to fail in large numbers across the country, marking the second consecutive year in which more than 100 financial institutions have shuttered their doors. After 140 banks collapsed in 2009, this year has witnessed 103 failures so far, putting it on pace to surpass last year’s bleak total.

Millions of Americans are not ready for retirement, according to Dallas Salisbury, president of the Alliance for Investor Education and the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The numbers Salisbury provided to AlterNet are startling:

The special watchdog created by the federal government to oversee spending in Afghanistan is doing a lousy job, according to other government watchdogs.

Officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission are crowing over the fine levied on Goldman Sachs for allegedly defrauding investors in the 2007 Abacus CDO, saying the $550 million penalty is the largest ever handed down against a Wall Street firm.

AIG is now on the hook to pay more than $1 billion as a result of lawsuits settled in Ohio over the one-time insurance giant’s illegal business practices. The largest of the settlements, $725 million, is owed to three Ohio pension funds that claimed they were the victims of accounting fraud, stock manipulation and bid-rigging by AIG prior to its near collapse in 2008.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, it’s a great time to buy a house if you have a near-perfect credit record, or to refinance a home loan if you have equity. But for the millions of Americans struggling to get by or just find a job, getting into the housing market is out of the question, which helps explain the recent bad news pertaining to mortgage applications. Requests for home loans dropped 3.1% earlier this month, marking the lowest level since December 1996. Since first-time homeowner tax credits ended on April 30, applications for mortgage loans have fallen in nine of ten weeks.

The wealth disparity between America’s richest and the poor and middle class more than tripled from 1979 to 2007, based on data that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities examined from the Congressional Budget Office.

Brian Miller really knows how to save the government money. The inspector general for the General Services Administration is so good at his job that over a four-year period, he found ways to save $160 in GSA operations for every $1 his office was given to conduct audits. That’s according to the Government Accountability Office, which found Miller and his team’s pre-award audits identified nearly $4 billion in potential savings from 2004 to 2008, all while operating an office on a $5 million budget. Not surprisingly, Miller is lobbying to get more funding for his shop, insisting that if he had more resources, he could save even more taxpayer dollars. So far Congress hasn’t complied with his requests.