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In a major settlement with the government, JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay $13 billion for selling faulty mortgages. Even though the award is the largest ever paid out by a single firm, and is significantly larger than what BP paid for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, analysts are saying the firm probably got off lightly.

The case centered on billions of dollars worth of sub prime mortgages that the company and its subsidiaries Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual sold in the years leading up to the 2008 housing crash.

US Attorney General Eric Holder lauded the decision yesterday in a statement saying, “No firm, no matter how profitable, is above the law, and the passage of time is no shield from accountability.”

The total amount of mortgages sold by JP Morgan Chase amounted to about $1 trillion, and the settlement sum of $13 billion is only about 2.5% of the total or half the bank’s annual profit. Four billion out of the $13 billion was actually the result of a settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency last month.

GUEST: William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One