Having a recession? Winston Peters must be a Minister again!

How can you tell if New Zealand is having a recession? Check if Winston Peters is a Minister.

Since 1990, whenever Winston Peters is a Minister, New Zealand experiences more quarters of negative growth than postive growth. When he gets fired, the economy starts to grow again.

Take his period as Minister of Maori Affairs from September 1990 to October 1991. The December 1990 quarter is -1.0%, worse than the previous two quarters combined. The next two quarters are negative. Then in the quarter he is fired, the ecomomy grows 1.3%, followed by strong growth until the end of 1996.

Then, his return as Treasurer in December 1996. The next quarter (March 1997) had negative growth, followed by one strong quarter and three negative quarters. When Jenny Shipley fired him in August 1998, the economy recovered and grows by 6% over the next 12 months.

Finally, we get Winston Peters sworn in again as a Minister in October 2005. The GDP figure for the final three months of the year is -0.1%, after 18 consectutive positive figures.

So if Cullen wants to turn the economy around, all he needs to do is get Helen Clark to fire Winston Peters.

UPDATE: I pulled my figures from a number of different sources (like Stats Yearbooks, Treasury and Trading Bank documents) so didn't publish them as they would be slightly inconsistent measurements. David Farrer has done the calculations from official figures he holds.