Today's Outrage: AIG, MetLife Contradict Obama

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I don't get it.

I don't understand the blatant contradiction between the Obama administration's clear desire to dismantle large, systemically risky financial institutions and the talks by AIG to sell its sizable foreign life insurance unit to MetLife.

MetLife(MET Quote) is already the largest U.S. life insurer and AIG's American Life Insurance unit, aka Alico, operates in more than 50 countries outside the U.S. and may be worth between $11 billion and $20 billion, depending on whether you ask AIG or MetLife.

While that may help the Obama team dismantle AIG, it sounds like the exact opposite of dismantling for MetLife.

Considering that AIG is controlled by the government, this whole on-again, off-again thing between these two insurers seems pointless. Didn't anyone over there get the memo that Obama doesn't like big financial companies?

I'd love to believe that AIG officials and MetLife management are just being defiant and exercising their rights in a free market, but that's too bold for an industry on the ropes.

So it begs the question: how does Obama define "too big"?

Maybe if the Alico unit is sold in a fire sale - because apparently no one but MetLife is showing any interest - it won't seem so big in the end.