Patrick Traughber's Travelog

On our way to Bintan we passed dozens of ships, anchored just outside the Port of Singapore. Victims of the economic slump, many of these ships have no cargo to deliver, despite their proximity to one of the world’s busiest ports.

I woke to a thunder and lightning storm this morning. Looks like that it won’t be an uncommon occurrence. This weather is by far the most extreme heat/humidity combo I’ve ever experienced. (For my fellow Americans, 32 degrees C = 89.6 degrees F)

The view from our deck. Bintan Island, Indonesia

Stephan, my German friend from Oxford. He and I are studying at NUS together this summer. Taken on Bintan Island, Indonesia, where we spent a few days chilling out before our program started.

I saw Mt. Fuji as we left Tokyo for Singapore. I’ll try to remember to add the URL to the photo so you can just click the photos to enlarge them.

The economic slowdown has had a huge impact on Long Beach, California. This photo shows a Toyota lot in the Port of Long Beach where unsold cars are stored after being unloaded from the container ships. Toyota typically leases 150 acres to store this inventory, but have been forced to lease another 15-20 acres to deal with the decline in demand for these automobiles.

From what I heard around town when I went home for winter break, the lines of casuals at the hiring hall has been tremendously long, with men and women waiting overnight in their cars in the hopes of finding work around the docks. The problem is, consumer confidence is down, which leads to low demand for goods, particularly foreign-made consumer goods. And since the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles account for a large percentage of total imports, these cities are hit disproportionally hard.

In addition, the Ports of Long Beach/LA are also major suppliers of cardboard and other recycled goods, which Chinese companies use to ship and package goods back to the US. Since we demand fewer goods from China, the Chinese need less of these recycled goods, so the ports are full of recycled waste, with no buyers. This has also caused a huge drop in prices for recycled goods.

Here is a short video on this topic from PBS’ News Hour.

(Photo credit to Getty Images)

Election Night at Twitter

Juliana and I met up with Dom and Meredith (and Leo!) at Twitter HQ on election night. Raven Zachary also made an appearance! It was an awesome, memorable night.

I thought I’d a share a slide I came across while studying for a final in health economics (Econ 157). This shows the effects government intervention can have on a given market. In this case we are analyzing the effect of taxation (as opposed to subsidization) on the shift in the demand and supply curves. Who pays for the tax depends on the elasticities of both supply and demand, where less elasticity results in paying a higher share of the tax. For example, the burden of a cigarette tax would fall more upon the smoker versus the supplier, as they are likely addicted and have a relatively inelastic demand curve. This might also be true for a gasoline tax, which many economists support.