Daniel Gross addresses the debate over what rising interest rates and plunging Treasury-note/bond prices (ignore the Slate headline reference to "bills." It's long-term debt we're talking about) are telling us. Are they the market's panicked response to all the deficit spending in DC? Or are they a relieved return to normality?

Gross correctly limns the suspect motivations and arguments of those who say Treasuries are "discounting" inflation apocalypse. And he notes that Treasury yields were ridiculously low in December because the financial world was falling apart and U.S. debt was the only safe port. Looked at in a historic time series, today's Treasury yields look perfectly normal. Investors are responding to a strengthening economy and not impending doom.

But what about gold? I'm the first to say that Gross's deprecation of the market as an intelligent discounting machine -- markets resemble "the Star Wars bar scene more than they do the economics faculty lounge at Princeton," he says -- applies equally to gold investors. But it's difficult to argue that the price of gold, a traditional if unreliable inflation hedge, is well within a historical range. It's near $1,000 and all-time highs, although it has lost steam over the last couple of days. Gold investors seem to be worried about something.