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Analysis

Nine Point Six Nine: Jamaica’s Summer of 2008 Brought Usain Bolt Three Gold Medals and Three World Records in Beijing, and Lehman Brothers’ Collapse to Wall Street, and the Two Events Together Defined an Island Caught Between Its Greatest Sporting Triumph and Its Most Dangerous Economic Moment

By Jamaica HomesJuly 15, 20090

Usain Bolt ran 9.69 in Beijing on August 16. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15. Jamaica lived both events in the same quarter — its greatest sporting triumph and its most dangerous economic moment arriving within twenty-nine days of each other.

Analysis

The Price of Everything: Jamaica’s Spring 2008 Brought Audley Shaw’s First Full Budget Into a World Where Oil Was Racing Toward Its All-Time Peak, US Consumer Confidence Was in Free Fall, and a 21-Year-Old Sprinter Named Bolt Was Starting to Look Like the Island’s Most Powerful Economic Story

By Jamaica HomesApril 15, 20090

Audley Shaw delivered his first budget in spring 2008 as oil raced toward $130 and US consumer confidence collapsed. Meanwhile, a 21-year-old from Trelawny ran 100 metres in 9.72 seconds in New York — handing Jamaica a story worth more in global attention than any marketing campaign the island could have bought.

Analysis

Bear Stearns Weekend: Jamaica’s First Quarter of 2008 Watched America’s Fifth-Largest Investment Bank Collapse Into a Fire Sale, While the Island’s Winter Tourism Held On and Audley Shaw Prepared to Face a Budget Year Unlike Any His Government Had Imagined

By Jamaica HomesJanuary 15, 20090

On the weekend of March 14–16, 2008, the United States government arranged the emergency sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase at $2 per share. For Jamaica, it was the moment the financial crisis stopped being a mortgage problem and became something far more dangerous to the Caribbean’s most tourism-dependent economies.

Analysis

One Hundred Dollars: Jamaica’s Fourth Quarter of 2007 Saw Bruce Golding’s New Government Take Its First Steps, Oil Touch the Unthinkable Threshold of US$100 Per Barrel, and America’s Financial Crisis Move From the Credit Markets Into the Banks That Americans Trusted

By Jamaica HomesOctober 15, 20080

Bruce Golding’s Jamaica Labour Party government had been in office for barely six weeks when the global financial system delivered…

Analysis

Dean and the Verdict: Jamaica’s Third Quarter of 2007 Brought Hurricane Dean’s Category-Four Pass in August, Then Bruce Golding’s JLP Victory on September 3, Ending Eighteen Years of PNP Government and Beginning a New Chapter in a Darkening Global Economy

By Jamaica HomesJuly 15, 20080

The third quarter of 2007 delivered two events that marked the end of one chapter in Jamaica’s history and the…

Analysis

The Campaign and the Crack: Jamaica’s Spring 2007 Brought a Budget Defending Old Fiscal Ground, an Election Already Being Fought Without a Date, and the Bear Stearns Collapse That Showed the World’s Financial System Had a Problem It Could No Longer Hide

By Jamaica HomesApril 15, 20080

The second quarter of 2007 was the season in which Jamaica’s domestic political calendar — an election coming, its date…

Analysis

World Cup Jamaica: The First Quarter of 2007 Brought International Cricket to Sabina Park and Trelawny, Tested Every Logistical Promise the Island Had Made, and Set the Final Countdown Toward a General Election That Neither Party Could Afford to Lose

By Jamaica HomesJanuary 15, 20080

The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 opened on March 13 across nine Caribbean hosting nations, and Jamaica’s role — group-stage…

Analysis

Before the World Cup: Jamaica’s Fourth Quarter of 2006 Closed a Record Tourism Year, Hardened the Election Calendar, and Turned Every Eye Toward the Cricket Venues That Would Put the Island on the World Stage

By Jamaica HomesOctober 15, 20070

Jamaica’s fourth quarter of 2006 delivered the confirmation that the tourism industry had been building toward all year: full-year stopover…

Analysis

A Season Without Storms: Jamaica’s Summer of 2006 Brought Its Quietest Hurricane Season in Three Years, Record Tourism Momentum, and a Crime Crisis That No Benign Weather Could Resolve

By Jamaica HomesJuly 15, 20070

After three consecutive years in which the summer hurricane season had delivered some combination of direct storm damage, agricultural loss,…

Analysis

The First Budget: Jamaica’s Spring 2006 Tested Whether Portia Simpson Miller’s New Government Could Balance the Promise of Change Against the Discipline That Fourteen Years of Debt Management Had Made Non-Negotiable

By Jamaica HomesApril 15, 20070

The second quarter of 2006 was the moment when Portia Simpson Miller’s government had to translate the political euphoria of…

Analysis

Mama P: Jamaica’s First Quarter of 2006 Delivered the Island Its First Female Prime Minister When Portia Simpson Miller Was Sworn In on March 30, Ending Fourteen Years of P.J. Patterson and Beginning an Era That the Country Had Been Waiting For

By Jamaica HomesJanuary 15, 20070

On February 25, 2006, Portia Simpson Miller won the People’s National Party leadership election with a decisive majority, defeating her…

Analysis

The Winter That Mattered: Jamaica’s Fourth Quarter of 2005 Had to Rescue a Year Battered by Three Storms, Fifty-Dollar Oil, and a Leadership Race That Was Remaking the Island’s Political Future

By Jamaica HomesOctober 15, 20060

Jamaica’s fourth quarter of 2005 arrived carrying the weight of a year in which the island had absorbed two significant…

Analysis

Dennis, Emily, and the Season That Would Not Stop: Jamaica’s Summer 2005 Brought Two Hurricanes in Eight Days and Watched Katrina Devastate New Orleans — Reminding the Island That the Caribbean’s Fortunes Travel Together

By Jamaica HomesJuly 15, 20060

Jamaica’s third quarter of 2005 delivered what the NOAA forecast had warned of and what the island had hoped to…

Analysis

Another Budget, Another Hurricane Season: Jamaica’s Spring 2005 Prepared Its Finances and Its Emergency Plans for the Year’s Second Half, Which Would Deliver Dennis and Emily in Quick Succession

By Jamaica HomesApril 15, 20060

Jamaica’s second quarter of 2005 was defined by the fiscal and meteorological preparation that had become the island’s seasonal rhythm:…

Analysis

The Recovery Season: Jamaica’s First Quarter of 2005 Brought a Tourism Rebound, a New Opposition Leader, and the Gradual Return of the Confidence That Hurricane Ivan Had Swept Away

By Jamaica HomesJanuary 15, 20060

Jamaica’s first quarter of 2005 delivered the winter tourist season the island needed after Hurricane Ivan had threatened to define…

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