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My name is Patrick Traughber. I recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently studying emerging technology at the National University of Singapore.
I use this space to share ideas about startups, economics (my major), and travel.
This site began In the spring of 2008 when I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain, backpacked in Morocco, and had English breakfasts in Oxford.
My email address is patricktraughber [at] gmail [dot] com if you want to contact me.
Here are my photos.
This site deserves some fresh content. The hiatus began in February, when I posted a lone piece on the economic downturn and its effects in Long Beach. Since then I haven’t posted, instead using other outlets like Facebook and Twitter. In that time, I’ve written two research papers, raced the Wildflower triathlon, graduated from Berkeley, worked at the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, and now I find myself in a new place, Singapore.
Over the next five weeks I’ll be posting updates on this site from Singapore. Please check back for updates, as I’m sure there will be some interesting developments.
For now, I am meeting with my German friend Stephan, and we are off to Bintan, an island just off Singapore that is actually part of Indonesia. We’ll be there for a few days relaxing on a beach, waiting for the start of our program at the National University of Singapore.
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)