The frontline in the debate over pricing bonds can be found in the analysis of two opinionated pundits. In the bulls’ camp is David Malpass, chief economist at Bear Stearns, who argues in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that the “U.S. expansion has been strong and steady despite the warnings of fragility, the repeated claims of a slowdown, and the fear of China (as intense as the Japan fears of the 1980s).” Taking the opposing view is Bill Gross, chief investment officer of Pimco, the giant bond shop in Newport Beach, Calif. “This recovery is different,” Gross writes in a newly published essay, “because it was spawned and subsequently nurtured on the back of asset appreciation alone.”