Upon hearing this, Shiller wasn't sleepy anymore, he rolled up his sleeves and said, "Let's go, I'll go with you!"
Roy hesitated and said, "Excuse me for being presumptuous, Professor, but aren't you a Professor of Psychology? Does psychology have anything to do with finance?"
"Of course, it does. You should know that psychology covers everything, and it just so happens I have a wealth of personal experience with this..."
Roy had no choice but to somewhat skeptically agree.
The next morning, Roy stood in front of all the heads of the gangster families and said, "Now, I have some good news and some bad news."
"Let's hear the good news first. I've had enough of bad news," one of them said. "Even now, I still have three cargo trucks stuck on Fifth Avenue."
"The good news is that if all goes well, our city's GDP may surpass Metropolis this year and become number one in the country."
There was a sudden uproar below, and the mob bosses whispered amongst themselves, saying, "How did we become number one so quickly? I haven't sold all my goods yet!"
"Weren't we just fifth or sixth? How much time has passed? Are we sure there's no problem with the data?"
Roy motioned for them to calm down, then said, "The bad news is that this is not because our city has developed, but because there are problems with the financial reports."
"So now it's up to all of you to decide whether we want to be number one."
The others were even more confused. How much of a problem could there be with the report for them to leapfrog Metropolis and land directly in first place?
Truth be told, even Roy didn't fully understand. All he knew was that after Shiller had spent the night sorting through the stack of financial reports, he had come back to him with a set of statistics that were both incredibly sensible and unimaginably outrageous.
He then told him that he was on the verge of becoming the mayor whose city had the fastest economic development, the most growth, and the quickest pace of increase in the country's history.
Roy said, "According to a financial officer who wishes to remain anonymous, if we take this first place, we'll become more famous and attract more investment opportunities. If we don't take this first place..."
Roy stammered for a moment, then read off a piece of paper: "Certain errors allowed in the understanding of macroeconomics will provide practical data with more room for adjustment, including stable measures against... inflated growth, redundancy room left by crisis shocks, and..."
Midway through, even Roy couldn't read anymore. He said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand many of the words in the latter part of that sentence. In any case, if we don't take this honor, we'll have more..."
Roy made a gesture that all the mob bosses would understand, and they unanimously chose the latter.
Of course, this was definitely not for the convenience of officially laundering money, but mainly because Gotham citizens were humble and low-key.
Meanwhile, in Gordon's office at the Gotham Police Department, Bruce was trying his best to keep a straight face. He said, "You're saying... you want to borrow my Bat Light? What for?"
Gordon was also a bit embarrassed. He said, "We don't really have a choice. Some jerk came up with the bright idea of upgrading the only old, outdated traffic light at the central intersection yesterday. It caused quite a bit of chaos."
Indeed, just when the traffic situation had started to improve somewhat, trouble struck again.
Most of Gotham's intersections didn't have traffic lights because they had proven useless in the past. Only the rotunda in the center of town still had an old-fashioned traffic light pole.
Although it hadn't been much use in the past, under the threat of force, Gordon found that it was much more convenient than shouting commands.
As a result, most of the traffic in the central city area was directed by the traffic light. The person circling the watchtower was just there to provide a show of force.
But of course, in the absurd city of Gotham, home to a straightforward folk, there was never a shortage of absurd geniuses.
Some prodigy in physics and engineering went out in the dead of night and modified the ancient, relic-like traffic light that had been there for who knows how many years.
Due to the incorrect commands from the altered traffic light, yesterday's situation at the central roundabout was such that: left lane done, right lane goes; front lane done, right lane goes; back lane done, right lane still goes...
After a full day, the right side of the intersection was smooth sailing while the other three intersections could only watch helplessly.
Every driver in Gotham was already prone to road rage. If everyone is stuck, that's one thing. But if others are moving forward one by one while they're still stuck, they're certainly not going to be happy.
As a result, the central roundabout, which had just been repaired a bit, once again almost turned into ruins.
Afterwards, the traffic light was repaired again, but after all these iterations, the old traffic light was barely glowing. Regular traffic lights would probably meet a similar fate, not being able to survive more than three hours during rush hour.
For Gotham citizens, such an inconspicuous object would struggle to catch their somewhat frantic attention. So Gordon came up with a solution: he planned to install something high-powered.
Then the question arose, where was the highest-powered light in all of Gotham?
Bruce looked at Gordon incredulously. Gordon, in return, shrugged and said, "Actually, this is still a crime-fighting measure. After all, if most people are transporting goods at night, then most people won't go out looking for trouble."