Reader question:

Please explain "fallen angels" in this passage:

"We like to buy what we call 'fallen angels.' We're looking for a company that has hit a bump in the road, or their industry is out of favor. We try to buy not only cheap stocks, but great companies, with the view of holding them for years."

My comments:

Here, fallen angels refer to companies whose stocks are currently low in price, but perhaps only temporarily.

These companies are good companies with solid records and performances most of the time but have recently fallen on hard times – hence fallen angels.

Fallen angels, you see, originally are celestial beings who live with God in heaven, according to the Christian religion. Angels, unlike humans, have wings and are dressed in white. They are very good people, angels I mean. They are kind and beautiful.

That is, normally. Believe it or not, angels in heaven can also err, or sin and do evil, like God's lesser creatures on earth can. And those sinners are consequently called fallen angels because God drove them out of heaven, just as He drove Adam and Eve out of Eden.

I never understand the logic of the Christian God, but anyways fallen angels are the bad apples, the bad ones. More precisely they are fallen heroes, good guys who have made mistakes and are currently having a rough time.

Therefore, when companies in the stock market are likened to fallen angels, we understand that these companies once were good, are usually good and, given time and another chance, they might be good again.

All right?

Alright, let's read a few recent media examples:

1. Whenever I mentor someone-especially a guy that wants to "be in the ministry"-in other words teach in some capacity within the local church, I like to push them and challenge their beliefs to make sure they operate under the idea that our theology is shaped by the Bible and not tradition, even long held traditions that we Christians sometimes accept as fact.

And being me, I like to have a little fun with it, so one of the areas we start with is Satanology-what do we actually know about Satan? "Well he's a liar, a deceiver, an enemy, an adversary, the serpent in Genesis, the dragon in Revelation…" Okay. What about his origin? Where did Satan come from? "Well he's a fallen angel." Oh, he is? (shocked expression on my face…) Where does the Bible say that? "Uh…"

Inevitably they say something about Isaiah 14 or Ezekiel 28. And I'll tell them, with a smile, we'll get to that…but let's first actually consider what the Bible clearly says:

First question: Does the Bible ever clearly state that Satan was an angel? The answer-no. The only reference to Satan even being like an angel is in 2 Corinthians 11, where Paul comments on how false apostles disguise themselves as real apostles and thus mimic the tricks of Satan. "And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (11:15). Paul's point is Satan is a good enough liar he pretends to be something he's not and fools people, and the false apostles are the same way.

Now the Bible does talk about fallen or disobedient angels in several places. In Revelation 12, there's a war going on in heaven concurrent with the birth, life, and ministry of Jesus. Satan and "his angels" lose that war and are cast down out of heaven. Satan loses his ability to be an accuser before God (like he was in Job), and as Peter says-he now roams around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. In his picture, John talks about how Satan goes off to try to make war against God's people, but he doesn't say what ends up happening to these angels of Satan.

But Jude tells us about fallen angels-"And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day" (6), and Peter with a similar tone, "For God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment" (2 Peter 2:4).

So the only Biblical references we have to the current state of fallen angels is that they are being bound in the gloomy darkness of hell by chains until the day of judgment. So doesn't it make sense that if Satan was actually a fallen angel as well-he would be with them?

- Fun With Theology: Is Satan a Fallen Angel? by Mike Bergman, October 6, 2011.

2. As financial institutions recover from the losses on loans made to troubled borrowers, some of the largest lenders to the less than creditworthy, including Capital One and GM Financial, are trying to woo them back, while HSBC and JPMorgan Chase are among those tiptoeing again into subprime lending.

Credit card lenders gave out 1.1 million new cards to borrowers with damaged credit in December, up 12.3 per cent from the same month a year earlier, according to Equifax's credit trends report released in March. These borrowers accounted for 23 per cent of new auto loans in the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 17 per cent in the same period of 2009, Experian, a credit scoring firm, said.

Consumer advocates and lawyers worry the financial institutions are again preying on the most vulnerable and least financially sophisticated borrowers, who are often willing to take out credit at any cost.

The banks are looking to make up the billions in fee income wiped out by regulations enacted after the financial crisis by focusing on two parts of their business - the high and the low ends - industry consultants say. Subprime borrowers typically pay high interest rates, up to 29 per cent, and often rack up fees for late payments.

Some former banking regulators said they were worried with this kind of lending, even in its early stages, signalled a potentially dangerous return to the same risky lending that helped fuel the credit crisis. "It's clear that we are returning to business as usual," said Mark T Williams, a former Federal Reserve bank examiner.

The lenders argue they have learned their lesson and are distinguishing between chronic deadbeats and what some in the industry call "fallen angels," those who had good payment histories before falling behind as the economy foundered.

A spokesman for Chase, Steve O'Halloran, said the bank "seeks to be a careful, responsible lender," adding it "is constantly evaluating the risks and costs of funding loans."

- US lenders eye risky clients again, Business-Standard.com, April 12, 2012.

3. The highest-paid member of the team is one of the few who is still under contract. Chandler Parsons will earn nearly $15.4 million next season-nearly double Nowitzki's salary. Parsons, 26, was out after the first game of the playoffs with a knee injury. The 6'9" forward subsequently underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair cartilage.

Meanwhile, shooting guard Monta Ellis has a player's option that he may opt out of in order to explore the marketplace. Ellis was the only Maverick to score more points and play more minutes than Nowitzki in the first round.

The other players currently under contract are rookie forward Dwight Powell, who came to Dallas in the Rondo trade, and backup point guard Devin Harris.

The style of the Mavericks front office in recent years has been to chase after top free agents, and when that fails, to look for riskier propositions-players who offer specific skill sets but are not at the top of anyone's wish list.

"I like our ability to work with what I call 'fallen angels,'" Cuban wrote in his personal blog in 2013. "Players who are traded or left unsigned because everyone in the league thinks that they can only be the player they saw in another organization."

- Dallas Mavericks Set to Enter a Crucial Transitional Era Under Mark Cuban, BleacherReport.com, May 4, 2015.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者張欣 中國日?qǐng)?bào)網(wǎng)英語點(diǎn)津 編輯：彭娜）