"A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been so compromised by corruption and fraud 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 status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited, at least indirectly, from it and would like to continue to do so.

The impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail & coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.

And so failed policies and their support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy.

Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system.

The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious, organized hypocrisy.”

The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery.