For some people it is the number Seven that guides their lives, in luck, love and lottery. And we may still get there, in 2010.

But as 2009 winds down, it is the number Five that is drifting into view, unbeknownst to so many, yet fatefully shaping and the determining our lives daily now.

The Fifth Surprise is in famous company. Beethoven's Fifth (the Symphony). Taking the Fifth (under American oat you may elect not to say anything that could incriminate you). A Fifth column (the enemy within). And Earth so far has known five great extinctions (fully completed, the last one 65 million years ago when something rather biggish hit us for a six ? wrong number for now).

So Five is also a magic number. What magic will it be working for us? For that we should go back to numbers One through Four, and consider why there is a Fifth (surprise) following.

The biggest surprise of our collective lifetimes (barring the Berlin Wall coming down, likewise predictable in hindsight) was the Great Financial Crisis whose onset began very unassumingly on our Women?s Day (9 August) 2007 and whose ringing finale (September 2008 through February 2009) for many created the impression of bringing the global house down.

We were all going to die (financially) and the eventual panic of October 2008 was monumental and should forever be retold as legend to succeeding generations, that they may not blunder into similar pitfalls (which they will, and which will be their problem).

Blessedly ignorant

Only a handful of people worldwide (on a population approaching seven billion ? that other magic number) saw it coming. We know this because all five (all Americans by the sounds of it, as you would expect, and insiders all), took almighty speculative punts and walked away with $1-billion apiece.

The rest of us were blessedly ignorant (though some will rightfully claim some unease at the time, even if doing so only after the event when 2020 vision was at its clearest, possibly mistaken realization with foresight).

That was the number One big surprise. Two through four then happened in quick succession: the global industrial collapse in 4Q2008 (foreseen by nobody I followed) was number Two surprise; the mighty synchronized global policy response successfully overcoming the sum of all fears (again nobody I know fully foreseeing it, yet extremely predictable) was number Three surprise; and the global V-shaped recovery of 2009 (derided by all, as all favoured every other letter of the alphabet, bar V) was number Four surprise.

As I have kept prodding clients, colleagues and friends for months now, with so many events surprising us and we getting it but completely wrong every time, there has to be a Fifth, if only because it has such a nice ring to it, preceded by illustrious Beethoven, American Constitutional Amendments, traditional Backstabbing and Extinctions.

An old Truth coming into focus

I have written before that this global journey since 9 August 2007 feels like being caught up in an enormous maze puzzle, like being inside Paul Gallico's upturned Poseidon Adventure and having to grope towards light and rescue, but having to do so in the dark, with surprise at every corner needing imaginative solutions, making it up as we collectively proceed.

The Fifth Surprise is again shaping as a positive outcome to an extremely negative expectation. And as this latest expectation is now quickly deepening worldwide, an old Truth is coming into focus.

Either this will be the correct hunch (in which case again put your head where the sun doesn?t shine because you are about to see your backside) or it will prove (again) to be wildly off the mark, catching us on the hop as we regularly underestimate mankind's resilience and ability to improvise and escape (the Great Escape was a great WW2 book, an even better film).

So when all is knowingly lost, look for silvery linings and the US cavalry for it has a way of always turning up, if inevitably late, prolonging suspense but not ultimately the drama (unlike 7de Laan ? again that other futuristic number).

"Hell, no, we won't go!"

And the Next Big Surprise is? Nothing really dramatic, going by the first four: after pumping up and saving the world, the world?s policymakers supposedly will be overwhelmed by recurring weakness at the very moment they themselves need to be ?responsibly? exiting (few commentators seemingly realizing the oxymoron hidden in that thought, perhaps better illustrated in something like National Intelligence).

You would think the Vietnam Generation would remember their own most famous cry ("hell, no, we won't go!")?

But no, governments being considered inherently incompetent, they are expected to act, like withdrawing at the most critical moment and that from a sense of ultimate responsibility.

The contradictions are interesting, to say the least.

Anyway, the Fifth questions inventory destockings ending, export collapses unwinding and fiscal boosts terminating after which nothing supportive remains, right?

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