Thanks to the IMF’s straitjacket, Jamaica has now reduced its public debt to 126% of GDP and trimmed its public-sector wage bill from 11% of GDP to 10%. That 1% growth rate conceals wild swings the country’s accumulated public debt recently reached 140% of GDP. The government’s record of economic management has been catastrophic. The IMF reform programme is imposing some much-needed discipline. Taken separately, none of these would put an end to stagnation taken together, they just might. Yet today four global forces, the IMF, mass tourism, the communications revolution and social entreprise, promise something much better. It has not been kind to the country in the past: Jamaica served as a fulcrum of the slave trade and a haven for pirates. How can Jamaica’s virtues be encouraged to triumph over its vices? A surprising answer lies in globalisation. On the weekend upon which Schumpeter arrived, the dumped bodies of two American missionaries were discovered.

The murder rate is ten times that of the United States. One of the island’s most famous products, marijuana, is illegal and controlled by criminal gangs. Over the past 30 years Jamaica’s growth rate per person has averaged just 1%. A brand new toll road, built by a Chinese company, links the south with the north. The weather is warm, the beaches idyllic. Jamaica has produced a striking number of global superstars (such as Marley and Usain Bolt) and global brands (including Blue Mountain coffee and Jamaican Lion marijuana).

There are some reasons to think that Mr Blackwell’s nose for the market has not deserted him. Now he is focusing on his Jamaican properties instead.

In 1989 he sold Island for £180m ($300m) and bought eight hotels in Miami Beach, which was then run-down. Mr Blackwell’s record label, Island Records, turned Bob Marley, among many others, into a star. Mr Blackwell’s mother was Fleming’s mistress, muse and supposedly the model for Pussy Galore. [T IS EASY to succumb to the romance of Jamaica over dinner with Chris Blackwell in GoldenEye, his boutique hotel in the grounds of Ian Fleming’s Caribbean retreat.

Is whatsapp down today in jamaica