THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Five major Banksters are set to be fined $5.7 Billion for rigging currency rates among themselves and making profits far in excess of their fines.

A group of global banks will pay more than $5 billion in penalties and plead guilty to rigging the world's currency market — the first time in over two decades that major players in the financial industry have admitted to criminal wrongdoing.

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland conspired with one another to fix rates on U.S. dollars and euros traded in the global market for currencies, according to a resolution announced Wednesday between the banks and the Department of Justice. A group of currency traders, who called themselves "The Cartel," allegedly shared customer orders through chat rooms and used that information to profit at the expense of their clients.

The resolution is complex and involves multiple regulators in the U.S. and overseas.

The four banks will pay a combined $2.5 billion in criminal penalties to the DOJ for criminal manipulation of currency rates between December 2007 and January 2013, according to the agreement. The Federal Reserve is slapping them with an additional $1.6 billion in fines, as the banks' chief regulator. Finally, British bank Barclays is paying an additional $1.3 billion to British and U.S. regulators for its role in the scheme.

Another bank, Switzerland's UBS, will pay a separate criminal penalty of $203 million for breaching a 2012 non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department.

The fines announced on Wednesday follow agreements in November with many of the same banks over currency trading.

The guilty plea is interesting, but useful only if they get caught again when they go back to their old ways. Then someone might add up their strikes and declare them out, in a perfect world.