In this season of political discontent, in which Sen. Bernie Sanders has accused big investment banks of everything short of the JFK assassination, the Justice Department has gone out of its way to prove his point.

Monday, the DOJ announced a settlement with the giant investment bank, Goldman Sachs, for its role in the global economic calamity known as the Great Recession.

Like many of its competitors, Goldman Sachs sliced, diced and repackaged billions of dollars worth of worthless subprime mortgages and marketed them as Triple-A-rated investments.

The settlement required Goldman Sachs to acknowledge that it had misled investors.

But the $5 billion settlement announcement itself is misleading because it vastly overstates the amount that Goldman Sachs actually will pay. And, of course, even though individuals within the bank made the decisions to mislead investors, none of them will be prosecuted.

Of the $5 billion, $2.385 billion is an actual civil penalty. Goldman Sachs manages more than $860 billion in assets.

Another $1.8 billion is in "consumer relief actions" that Goldman Sachs must take. It can deduct that cost from its tax bill, along with another $875 million worth of consumer relief as part of settlements with several state attorneys general credit union regulators.

After earlier settlements with other investment banks seemed tougher than they actually were, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, introduced the Truth in Settlements Act. It would force the government to specifically break down and explain settlements rather than advertising the total number.

The bill passed the Senate but has been bottled up in three different House committees.

Although the big banks were only one aspect of the financial calamity, the episode proved that the bankers could take outlandish risks with impunity. At the very least, the government should be required to honestly disclose the true impact of settlements.