 all the different views overnight. The Wall Street Journal had described Noski as "book- ish," but he had an intellect to match Zeglis's, an obsession with preci- sion, and the steely determination to achieve it. But it was late Sunday evening before we were able to convince ourselves that we would miss our previous earnings estimate by as much as nine cents a share, or about 41/2 percent. One-time events, such as the delay in closing the MediaOne deal and the newly consolidated AtHome losses, would essentially cancel each other out. But consumer long-distance revenue showed every sign of declining at an even more precipitous rate than had been antic- ipated at the end of the previous year, and, while business data vol- umes appeared to be holding, WorldCom was introducing new rock- bottom prices. Both developments portended problems in the second half of the year. There was no discussion about postponing a change in guidance, even though the consequences were not hard to predict. When AT&T had lowered its guidance in 1996, the company's stock price had fallen 9.8 percent on the first day of trading following the announcement. When the company lowered it again in 1997, the stock had fallen IO percent in two days. In both years, the company attributed its earnings shortfall to competitive pricing pressures and to increased investments in high-growth parts of the business. News stories, however, focused primarily on the drop in the stock price. I predicted that this time the reaction would be even more pronounced Stay Off the Treadmill of Expectations and the duration of the news coverage would probably be longer. If anything, I underestimated the reaction. None of our competitors fol- lowed suit, although we knew they must have been feeling the same pressures. Neither MCI WorldCom nor Sprint revised its full-year earnings estimates until the end of the third quarter. Who could blame them? Our stock was battered, falling 30 percent in thirty days-a loss of $54 billion in market value. What happened? AT&T's most pr