John S. Reed’s mea culpa:

John S. Reed, who helped engineer the merger that created Citigroup Inc., apologized for his role in building a company that has taken $45 billion in direct U.S. aid and said banks that big should be divided into separate parts.

“I’m sorry,” Reed, 70, said in an interview yesterday. “These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it’s not easy to see what’s happened.”

Lawmakers were wrong to repeal the Depression-era Glass- Steagall Act in 1999, Reed said. At the time, he supported overturn of the law, which required the separation of institutions that engaged in traditional customer banking services from those involved in capital markets.

It’s okay, dude. Hindsight is always 20/20, and nobody expects their baby to grow up to be a bandit-mask-wearing, soulless ward of the state. Or do they? Best quote:

“When you’re running a company, you do what you think is right for the stockholders. Right now I’m looking at this as a citizen.”

Does that translate roughly to “Well… it was a really good deal for me at the time?”