The word 'malaise' seems to be popping up more and more in news and op-ed pieces. It makes most of its appearances in business reporting (such as here, and here and here), but has been making more than a few cameos in news analysis (such as here) and op-eds.

This is the kind of thing that brought Pres. Carter down. Bush's political handlers are much too smart to have Bush scold the nation for this malaise, but not smart enough to have Bush do anything about it either.

So now we are facing enough problems to fit into three "We didn't start the fire" songs by Billy Joel: Record deficits, a government that will default next week (thanks to House GOPers to chickenshit to vote for a debt limit increase), a stock market back to 9-11 levels, drops in home purchases, drops in consumer confidence, daily corporate scandals, Enron, Halliburton, international ridicule, weekly "terror" alerts, congressional investigations into 9-11 failures, leak wars between the FBI, CIA, and NSA,