Last week, five big Wall Street banks agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines to settle charges that they manipulated foreign-exchange markets. In the illegal scheme, some traders with the banks, which included Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays and RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), created a special chat room where they exchanged information to boost bank trading profits at the expense of everyone else, including bank customers.

One email revealed by federal investigators quoted a trader engaged in the exchange rate manipulation saying “If you ain’t cheating, you aint trying.”

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch called the market manipulation a “brazen display of collusion.” Yet, not one banker was charged with a crime. Not one banker was prosecuted. Not one banker went to jail.

The banks paid billions of dollars in fines, but that money comes at the expense of shareholders, not top executives.

This latest Wall Street scandal sounds a lot like the illegal manipulation of the Libor rate, a major international interest rate. That crime also saw a few big banks profit at the expense of everyone else. And in that case too, the banks paid billions in fines, but there was no prosecution or jail for bank executives.

This pattern of big fines, but no prosecution or jail time seems to suit everyone involved. The banks pay billions, which barely puts a dent in profits. The top bankers keep their jobs and their multimillion-dollar salaries — and the Obama administration can pretend it’s being tough on Wall Street.

The big banks now just build billion-dollar fines into their cost of doing business.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the few in Washington to speak out on this slap-on-the-wrist sham, said the multibillion dollar agreements are “a get-out-of-jail-free card for the biggest corporations in the world.” She’s right.

Jimmy Gurule, a former Treasury official and former assistant attorney general, was also right when he said, “while the payment of these large fines may help reduce the federal deficit, such penalties do little to change the pervasive culture of corruption that currently exists in the banking sector. Real change will only occur when corrupt bank officials are indicted, convicted and sent to prison for their crimes.”

Despite the record-high fines, the failure to send any banking executives to prison is more evidence that Wall Street practically owns Washington. The big banks are so powerful and contribute so much money to politicians that they are protected.

Another explanation could be the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington, in which top bankers serve a few years in the U.S. Treasury or other agency then return to Wall Street. Another reason for the failure to prosecute top bankers is that officials at the Treasury, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory agencies often land high-paying jobs on Wall Street when they leave their government jobs. They would risk big paychecks later by being tough on Wall Street now.

Whatever the reason, Washington has failed to get tough with Wall Street. That seems true with last week’s settlement which has big banks paying $5.5 billion in fines and penalties. The failure to get tough on Wall Street was also evident following the 2007-08 financial crisis when no bank officials were prosecuted for their role in the fraud related to mortgage-backed securities.

It was different during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Back then, bankers were sent to prison for their crimes.

Despite the savings and loan crisis being less than 20 percent the size of the mortgage-backed securities crisis of 2007-08, the federal reaction to the crisis was aggressive. There were more than 30,000 criminal referrals, resulting in more than 1,000 felony convictions by the Justice Department.

In the 2007-08 financial crisis fueled by fraud surrounding the sale of securities of bundled mortgages, there were no criminal referrals. None.

Washington and Wall Street are doing a dance they hope fools people into believing that the Obama adminstration has been tough on financial crimes.

But the pattern of big fines, with nobody going to jail is not fooling anyone paying attention. Fines alone will not change the culture, jail time will.