“A credibility trap is a condition in which the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.”
The bureaucrats, politicians, professional enablers, and financial elite are so intricately complicit in, and so benefited by, the broken system which we have now that they cannot talk about the systemic problems that are driving the real economy into a perpetual stagnation. They may talk a good game, and pledge themselves to reform in passing, but quickly turn the conversation to some emotional distraction, some other group of people to blame, some other social cause, anything but the serious subject of substantial financial reform.
They are very much a part of the problem, if not at the heart of it.