Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora & Returnee Update — July to September 2008

Published: 2 October 2008 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways

• Bolt Wins 100m, 200m and Relay in Record-Breaking Beijing
• Jamaica Claims Sprint Clean Sweep at Beijing Olympics
• Lehman Brothers Files Bankruptcy, Shocking Global Markets
• US Government Seizes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
• Caribbean Diaspora Homes Hit Hard by Foreclosure Crisis
• Obama-McCain Race Enters Its Decisive Final Weeks

Introduction: The Greatest Quarter in Jamaican Athletic History

Q3 2008 will endure in Jamaican national memory as the quarter in which the country produced the greatest individual sprint performance in Olympic history, claimed a clean sweep of sprint medals at the same Games, and then watched as the global financial system began to collapse in the same weeks. The contrast — between the transcendence of the Bird’s Nest and the catastrophe of Wall Street — captures something of the dissonant complexity that characterised Q3 2008 for Jamaica’s diaspora. This update draws on Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, IOC, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, and Caribbean diaspora media through 30 September 2008.

Beijing 2008: Bolt and Jamaica’s Olympic Glory

Usain Bolt arrived at the Beijing Olympics as a sprint talent of exceptional promise — the world junior 200m record holder, the 2007 World Championships silver medallist in the 200m, and the newly crowned world record holder in the 100m after his April 2008 run of 9.72 in Kingston. What he produced in the Bird’s Nest between 16 and 22 August exceeded even the highest expectations. His 100m final on 16 August — run in 9.69 seconds, a new world record, despite his celebrated chest-thumping celebration before he had crossed the line — produced the most discussed single moment in Beijing’s opening week. Sports scientists calculated that had he run through the line at full effort, a sub-9.60 was physiologically possible. The world record, set without apparent maximum effort, reframed the boundaries of what was achievable in the sprint events.

His 200m final on 20 August was, if anything, even more complete: 19.30 seconds, a new world record, breaking Michael Johnson’s 1996 Atlanta mark of 19.32, running the final straight with clear daylight between himself and the rest of the field. He then ran the anchor leg for Jamaica’s 4x100m relay team, which set a new world record of 37.10 seconds. Three events, three gold medals, three world records. The performance had no equivalent in the history of sprint athletics at a single Olympic Games.

Jamaica’s wider Olympic performance contextualised Bolt’s individual brilliance within a national sprint tradition of exceptional depth. Shelly-Ann Fraser won the women’s 100m gold. Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson took silver and bronze. Veronica Campbell-Brown won the women’s 200m gold. The Jamaican women’s team’s dominance in the sprints — three medals in the 100m, gold in the 200m — was a statement about Jamaican athletics as a system, not merely about individual exceptional talent.

In the Caribbean diaspora communities of New York, London, Toronto, and the US Southeast, Beijing produced the most intense collective experience of national pride in the post-independence era. Community centres, sports bars, and private homes held viewing parties for the sprint finals. The Jamaican national colours — black, green, and gold — appeared in windows and on cars. Caribbean community radio stations ran continuous Beijing coverage. The scale of the community’s emotional engagement with the Games reflected both pride in individual and national achievement and, at a deeper level, the validation of Jamaican identity in the international arena that diaspora communities, operating in the margins of their adopted societies, found especially resonant.

Lehman Brothers: The Week the Financial System Broke

The collapse of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 — fifteen weeks after Beijing’s sprint euphoria — was the single most consequential financial event since the Great Depression. Lehman’s bankruptcy filing at 1:45 a.m. on that Monday, with $613 billion in debt and no buyer willing to complete a rescue acquisition, triggered a cascade of market failures that within days had frozen global credit markets, caused money market funds to ‘break the buck’, and produced the largest single-day falls in stock markets since 11 September 2001. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who had spent the weekend of 13–14 September trying to orchestrate a private-sector rescue, now found themselves managing a systemic crisis with no playbook.

The US government’s takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on 7 September — the two government-sponsored mortgage giants whose combined liabilities exceeded the national debt of most countries — had been the crisis’s prelude. The AIG bailout on 16 September, the emergency merger of Merrill Lynch into Bank of America, the takeovers of Washington Mutual and Wachovia, and the congressional battle over the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program all followed in rapid succession through the final weeks of Q3 and the opening weeks of Q4. The speed and scale of the financial system’s disintegration was unlike anything in living memory.

For Caribbean diaspora communities in the United States, the crisis’s most immediate impact was felt in housing. The US subprime mortgage crisis — which had been building since 2006 — had already begun to produce foreclosures in the Florida, New York, and New Jersey communities where Caribbean-American homeownership was concentrated. The financial crisis’s September acceleration caused credit markets to seize entirely, making refinancing impossible for homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages that were resetting to higher rates. The foreclosure wave that had been building became a tsunami. Community organisations in Miami-Dade, in the New York suburbs, and in Atlanta were reporting a sharp escalation in housing emergency calls.

The Presidential Race: Obama’s Defining Moment

Senator John McCain’s decision in late August to select Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate had energised the Republican base and briefly narrowed Obama’s polling lead. But the financial crisis’s eruption in September changed the campaign’s dynamics fundamentally. McCain’s statement that ‘the fundamentals of the economy are strong’ on 15 September — the day of Lehman’s bankruptcy — became the defining single misstep of his campaign. Obama’s calm, measured response to the crisis — his steady demeanour through the financial panic, his first presidential debate performance on 26 September, and his campaign’s ability to maintain discipline through the most volatile political environment in recent memory — rebuilt and extended his polling lead through Q3’s closing weeks.

Caribbean diaspora community organisations were in the final phase of their voter mobilisation efforts as Q3 ended. The registration drives that had been running since spring were closing out; the canvassing operations in key communities were at maximum intensity. The financial crisis had sharpened the community’s sense of political stakes: an election that had already been historically significant for racial reasons was now also a referendum on whose economic stewardship would be trusted in the most severe financial crisis since the 1930s. We report next from 2 January 2009, when Obama’s election result will be the opening story.

This Quarterly Jamaica Diaspora and Returnee Update is researched and published by Jamaica Homes News. Sources include Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica Observer, IOC, Bank of Jamaica, PIOJ, MFAFT, and PICA. All figures and developments are accurate as of the publication date, 2 October 2008.

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