They say on the ball field that if you talk the talk, you better be ready to walk the walk. That's also true when the big boys play their games on Wall Street. Anyone can babble about strategic visions, but it's a lot harder to make a strategy work than it is to run your mouth about it. Which brings us to the two giant deals presented last week by confident CEOs who want us to believe the world has never seen more perfect plans. One of these deals, of course, was Time Warner's proposed merger with Turner Broadcasting to create the world's biggest media company. Because details have been leaking for a month, this deal was about as surprising as Sports Illustrated putting a pneumatic woman on its cover in February. The other deal was AT&T's shocking announcement that it would voluntarily split into three separate companies. Time Warner and AT&T expounded endlessly on their visions. But their records-as opposed to their rhetoric-raise major doubts about their ability to back up their words.
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