Since 2003 Scottish Enterprise has invested £90m and brought in £193m of private money.Admittedly, the recession has been a bit of a dampener.
As a dampener, it is trying to fix the price of alcohol, Guinness included.
The only dampener was George Bush's state-of-the-union address this week, which mentioned trade only once, Doha not at all, and seemed sweetly oblivious to the impending demise of his authority to sign trade deals, free of congressional nit-picking.The optimism turns on two magic numbers: 17 and 54.
A second and related dampener on growth has been the collapse in stockmarkets everywhere, which has eroded households' wealth and hence their desire to continue spending at the pace of last year.
Mr Obama and Mr Castro will "interact" informally in the corridors of the summit.The second dampener is Venezuela.
In Indonesia share valuations are not dear, and company profits are likely to jump: here, it is politics (parliamentary elections this month, presidential elections next March) that is proving to be the chief dampener.
He has not been seen in public since March.Raúl Castro's crackdown on corruption is another dampener.
Elements of the armed forces are believed to be behind death threats to senior journalists, which, to put it mildly, act as a dampener on the freedom of expression.
As the state sector grows, in the Schumpeterian analysis it reduces the area of entrepreneurial activity and becomes a dampener on the economy, sucking away funds needed for productive growth.
A likelier idea, according to Tory sources, is therefore to put a dampener on low-skilled immigrants, by restricting their access to tax credits and other in-work benefits.
So hopes of future double-digit growth in profits are unrealistic.A second dampener on profits is that almost all the rest of the world economy is fragile.
