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Icarus was given a pair of wings made by his father for him to escape from prison. The wings were made from feathers held together with wax. Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun for the wax would melt.

Exulted by his ability to fly, basked in the feeling of invincibility that flying gave him, Icarus grew careless and forgot his father's warning. He soared upward closer to the sun. The blazing heat melted the wax that held the feathers together, causing them to fall off. Icarus continued to flutter his wings, but they were no longer there, only his arms. He fell to his death in the sea near Samos that bears his name today.

That's as far as the Greek mythology of Icarus goes.

Yet, myth is open to different interpretation.

Nowadays, many artists and poets romanticise Icarus as someone who dares to reach a higher power.

Joni Mitchell's "Amelia" compares Amelia Earhart to Icarus. Several heavy metal bands wrote their lyrics about the heroic goals of Icarus.

There is a book entitled, "The Icarus Factor: The Rise and Fall of Edgar Bronfman Jr" written by Rod McQueen in 2004 about the heir to the huge Seagram liquor business. The book tracks Bronfman on his meteoric rise, and spectacular fall, that proves once again the old adage "From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."

Legends and myths have one thing in common - they are meant to teach us lessons. If we learn, as we are supposed to, we may be able to avoid the mistakes committed by these Aristotelian tragic heroes - those who are led to their downfall due to hubris or excessive pride.

But the sad truth is we hardly ever learn.

In the US, the sub-prime debacle has brought to light so many present-day Icarus's. Young, driven, highly intelligent traders on turbo-charged overdrive have fallen one by one to their demise.

This week, it is the 46-year-old Ron Beller, a hedge-fund chief of Peloton Partners - once the world's best performance hedge fund operator - which has just lost US$17 billion (Bt551 billion). Beller's rude awakening came as bankers who once vied for his business, reeled in the credit lines and seized the fund's assets.

Money, fame, power and friends are easy to acquire ... difficult to keep.

The problem is when you are in its midst, it is rather difficult to see the elephant in the room.

Worse if you are surrounded with yes men who would not say the emperor has no clothes.

How bad can it get?

In an absurd attempt to please his boss, Chuck Colson, the general counsel to Richard Nixon, declared he would run over his own grandmother for the president. He once considered firebombing the Brookings Institution, a Democratic Party-leaning think-tank, and sending in FBI officers disguised as firemen to steal documents his boss wanted.

No wonder the Watergate scandal went down as the cause of one of the worst presidential crises in US history.

The former New York governor, Eliot Spitzer is another present day Icarus.

He rose from being an obscure New York Attorney-General to take down one by one the once seemingly impervious financial titans such as the likes of AIG's Hank Greenburg. He knew full well he was making himself an archenemy of the super rich and powerful.

But he must have felt so invincible after his brilliant victories that he dared to do what he did. History now knows him as Client Number Nine, the identity given to him by the prostitution ring where he was alleged to be a frequent customer.

It was his own hubris, pure and simple, that brought him down.

Politics can give a person a warped sense of invincibility rendering arrogance a common trait among many politicians.

And a man's character is his destiny.

Politics creates a cult-like atmosphere around the bosses.  It gives them a short cut to an extreme sense of empowerment.

A sense of empowerment can be highly addictive. Once you experience it, you crave for more. You are hooked. Some are willing to do anything to get the next fix.

I was once told by a politician that some cabinet members after leaving, or losing their posts, could not venture out of their homes for quite some time. There would be no security details, no one lining up to greet them.

 It was as if their lifeblood was draining away, the balloon was deflated. No more sense of invincibility.  They were deprived of the identity given to them by politics and their political office. Without the power of their office, they felt lost. Such power can devour you.

Politics also creates a way of thinking all of its own.

It is therefore understandable why many of us lay people find it hard to understand our political landscape.

Politics and political maneuverings are supposed to be like a chess game. Ours unfortunately, has more than two players.

Ours is a game of scrambled chess. There are too many cheerleaders, wannabes, hangers-on, sharks and sycophants. They are obsequious. They, in furtherance of their own agenda, are not merely looking on, they are taking an active part in the game, exploiting the position of their bosses.

It has become so bad that sometimes the key players themselves do not know how the pawns are moved.

These active political agents would stop at nothing to elevate the sense of invincibility in their bosses - their alter egos. The bosses, after being on the receiving end of so much adulation, no doubt feel impregnable. Arrogance is being induced to an inordinate degree, taking the better part of the key players, setting the stage for the "Perfect Storm".

The game will then head into checkmate. By then, the tragedy to which Icarus succumbed will once again bring down those who choose to ignore the lessons of the past.