Here is the NYT's token conservative opinion in their "Room for Debate," the text of which is here.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Recessions are a part of the natural economic cycle — they ease economic disequilibria, often exacerbated by bad policies.

Politicians, and the technocrats who advise them, should recognize that they can’t completely stop recessions. Many of the policies aimed at moderating recessions can lead to excesses in the economy that make later recessions far worse.

The 1998 bailout of the small hedge fund Long-Term Capital, for example, set a terrible regulatory precedent of ad hoc government support for financial institutions. It's possible that inaction by the Fed and Treasury at that time would have caused a small recession if Long-Term Capital was left to fail, but it would have been better to weather it then — when there was a budget surplus and no collapsed housing bubble. Plus it would have sent a message to financial institutions to curb their recklessness.

Seems pretty ok so far, summary: Recessions have unfortunate social implications Unfortunate policy can have a moral hazard effect, increasing likelihood/severity of future recessions

Still, there are things that can be done to help us weather the next downturn better than we have in the past: First, the more flexibility there is in terms of prices, wages, employment and the ability to start or dissolve businesses, the better the economy is at being able to weather sudden reductions in spending and investment. Minimum wage and other labor laws, for example, may make is impossible to hire workers at lower wages during a recession.

No argument on the flexibility point, though the wording says “may make it impossible,” I presume the author means regulations such as occupational licensing and misguided minimum wage increases , both of which have data backing such conclusions and policy recommendations.

Second, the uncertainty the government injects in the economy plays a major role in the length and severity of recessions. For instance, massive regulations, such as Dodd-Frank, take years to implement and can exacerbate a crisis.

So this is where it gets juicy. Does the author mean policy/regulatory uncertainty causes a deferral of investment? Well… But what about in finance specifically? Perhaps change in policy isn't always pro-cyclical, so it would be good for the author to specify. And acknowledging that an era of financial deregulation in conjunction with policy moral hazard requires financial regulation, instead of attacking Dodd-Frank because it disagrees with the anti-regulation ideology .

It’s possible that the meaning of uncertainty here is taken to mean something else, as Krugman has recently discussed. Dodd-Frank does takes years to implement of course, which is an admittedly useful point to make. Non-disclosure of stress test requirements I'm sure is something which affects this uncertainty, but that would require a whole other discussion of costs and benefits.

Meanwhile, the discretionary and ad hoc interventions of the Fed and other central banks in the economy doesn't establish firm regulation or precedents. If the government adopted credible, rules to determine when they increase or decrease the supply of money, it would send a clear signal of expectations, which would reduce uncertainty and weaken the risk of recessions.

What is meant by a clear signal of expectations? Perhaps greater transparency is a net positive to investment, much like a Taylor rule is argued to be. Oil prices have been rock bottom for the last two years, but the Federal Reserve hasn’t made a move against inflationary effects that such a fall in household costs would usually imply. Thus discretion isn’t always the boogeyman the author is thinking of.

Last but not least, the government must reduce our debt-to-G.D.P. ratio. Rising debt and slowing G.D.P. is a bad combination. The answer, here, is probably spending cuts. Fiscal adjustment packages made mostly of spending cuts are more likely than tax increases to lead to lasting debt reduction.

And the crescendo reaches a peak. Let us go through the recent “confidence fairy” and austerity literature.
This is the latest and a representative picture of austerity. On the debt- GDP ratio, data shows long run growth to higher in countries with a lower ratio, which is useful for long run policy discussions.

This long run/short run fallacy and other areas of austerity is already combatted much better by Krugman, as I’m sure you’re all very aware.

Unfortunately, austerity arguments are necessarily short term, and Larry Summers explains how in the current environment, expansionary debt-financed investment spending is likely a positive investment

This makes intuitive sense: Fiscal adjustments based on spending cuts signal that a country is serious about getting its house in order. More taxing and spending do not.

The idea that one day if government spending and taxation fall to service the past debt, which you may remember is also the bedrock of the financial system, then business confidence and investment will rise significantly is frankly absurd. Methinks that some undergraduate courses should be retaken.

To some up this author’s attitude to public finance: When in doubt, prax it out.

Judging by this piece and going over her publications, the ideology is deafening. Regulation is apparently always evil. I'm definitely not someone to be saying that it is anywhere near perfect or better than no regulation in some areas, but not this opinion piece is not a good criticism. If the NYT wanted a token conservative view for this series then it could have chosen much, much better.