When Hurricane Melissa made landfall on Jamaica’s southern coast on October 28, 2025, as a Category 5 storm packing winds exceeding 185 mph, it shattered the economic trajectory of a nation that had spent a decade earning its place among the Caribbean’s most fiscally disciplined economies. Today, Jamaica stands at a crossroads: pursue reconstruction the way developing nations always have — slowly and dependently — or pioneer a new model built on the private capital market. The case for the latter has never been more urgent.