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The reasons are mostly historical and they relate to the very birth of the modern capital markets and the birth of the debt market. English Common Law was the first in the world to legally try to enforce regulations on the dangerous practice of fractional reserve banking. This happens to be a favourite subject of mine, if you have the time it should be an interesting read.TLDR: Much like Sillicon Valley was the cradle of innovation for most of the technology and the gadgets we hold in our pockets, London has historically been the cradle of innovation for finance.A brief history of modern financeIf it starts sounding as conspiracy theory at all, I would assume my assurance to the contrary is made debatable as this is the Internet after all. But I will make sure to include links and helpful tips to validate this.The first modern banks in the entire world were established in LondonThe first two banks in the world to function similarly to the way a modern day bank, were Barclays, established in 1690 and still alive today, and the Bank of England, established in 1694. This is around the time the City of London was also established as financial headquarter, you know before Canary Wharf came about centuries later.Modern banking was first legalised in London, but not born hereLong time ago, in the kingdom of far far away(modern day Italy), families like the Medici and many alike, became insanely wealthy by following this relatively simple train of thought, also outlined in this video.They started out as goldsmiths, so they would essentially cast coins. This is the very physical act of taking a large chunk of raw metal, melting it, cleansing it and so on, weighing it and producing a coin of a given nominal value. Because in the old days “paper currency” didn’t exist, everything used to by backed by precious metal.They then offered a vault rental service to merchants and others alike, for a small monthly fee, they would take “your” gold, store it safely with security and the like, and in exchange for your gold you had a “claim check” to legitimise your claim to the gold that’s yours but resides in the gold smith’s vault. Something that basically said “Johnny Doe owns 100 grams of gold from the vault”. Johnny cam therefore come and exchange his claim for the actual gold whenever he pleases.The goldsmith got a monthly fee and made a business out of it. On top of that, they offered loans to people who would ask for it, initially in the form of gold coins, from their own private holdings. Much like your friend coming to ask you for a loan today, except of course there was an interest charge.13th Century, Europe learns about paper notes: This is the birth of paper notes, as a simplification to coins. Coins require laborious casting and counting measures, they are very difficult to carry and so on. Goldsmiths noticed that most of the people who had received the so called “claim checks for gold” were simply trading the claim checks between themselves for the sake of convenience.Writing on a piece of paper and “grading” it into small units is trivial comparing to melting gold and casting it, and you can carry virtually infinite amounts in your pocket, because well paper folds and you can write anything you want on it.Paper notes or banknotes are a much older concept originating in China.The idea of using a durable light-weight substance as evidence of a promise to pay a bearer on demand originated in China during the Han Dynasty in 118 BC, and was made of leather.Read this.Now take any British Pound note out from your wallet, and read the back side: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £10 pounds” (or whatever). This is written directly below the top side that says “Bank of England”. So 2000 years later, this is the norm.The paper you hold in your pocket is virtually worthless intrinsically, but legally speaking it’s your claim to something of “real value”, where the nominal value is the number of monetary units on the note itself.Ironically but just like everything else, capitalism is made in China.Paper notes caught on: Based on this “innovation” of paper notes vs metal coins, goldsmiths made a very interesting observation, namely that most of the claim check holders never came about to redeem their gold back. If they could conveniently trade the claim checks in the marketplace without the need to carry large quantities of metal with you, why do it?So this ended up being the 13th century version of Apple Pay. Not NFC enabled, but it worked quite well, especially for the goldsmiths as you’re about to witness. Took a while before it ever got to Europe, but hey, 1500 years fly by.Goldsmiths became lenders: So what do banks have to do with goldsmiths? Well, they are one and the same. The goldsmiths realised they could simply start lending out all their depositors gold in the form of paper notes. Since as time went by people started having the same confidence in paper notes as they once did in the gold, it was far more convenient. No gold had to be transported physically, and paper was easy to print.Banking is born: Eventually, as goldsmiths grew wealthier and wealthier, people took notice, and their semi-ponzy scheme was discovered. Since the depositors bore the actual risk of a defaulting loan, they should’ve been somehow rewarded, for someone else managing their finances and making huge interest profits on it.This is the birth of banking. Depositors deposit their gold and the bank pays them interest on their deposits, just like today. So half a millennia later not much has changed on the surface, although a lot has under the covers.Legally speaking, the money in your bank account is not yours. Really. If you can bear the legal slang, read the dreaded “Terms and conditions”. The deposits you make to your bank account are your loan to the bank. Why else would the bank pay you interest?Your bank balance is a figure reflecting the amount of money the bank owes you. If you deposit physical cash in a safety deposit box with the bank, then that money is a deposit and it’s all yours, when you “deposit” money to your savings account with 0.90% interest rate, you are in effect lending more to the bank. When you withdraw, the bank in effect repays part of the loan you made to it.Makes you wonder why no one reads the T&Cs no?Fractional reserve banking is born. The modern day capital markets and especially the retail sector like to do business under an interesting misconception. They make people think there is this huge army of pensioners full of savings who are the source of all mortgages.This couldn’t be any further from the truth. As bankers discovered 5 centuries ago, when you hold everyone else’s gold you can get super clever with it. Let’s go back to the 15 century, banking is now established, people deposit their money, the goldsmith who’s now their banker lends it out at a high interest rate, pays the depositors a lower interest rate, and the difference between the two is in effect the banks revenue.All good right? Wrong. Bankers got greedy, and they worked it out that no one could ever find out how much gold was really in their vaults. So they started handing out loans in the form of claim checks for gold that never really existed.As long as they had enough gold in the vault to handle the average withdrawal rate, no one would be the wiser. It’s only when a large enough number of depositors wanted to redeem their claims to gold at once they would have a problem. This is called a run on the bank, and in the 15th century it happened a bit. Bankers flaunted the wealth that got to their heads, as they become insanely rich, even far beyond the Forbes lists of today.You wouldn’t believe just how rich they become. Here’s a great hint, the man known to history as Pope Leo the 10th also had a birth name: Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici. I mean holy nepotism. Read this.Maria de Medici upon leaving Italy and temporarily waiting in modern day Luxembourg before departing for France where she was to marry Henry the 4th of France commissioned “le Palais du Luxembourg” to the built because she felt homesick. Still feeling rich with your iPhone 6s Plus 128gb?Why did they leave Italy?I mean the weather and food are arguably better, and I doubt they were pissed with the absence of Starbucks in Milan, like I was. It didn’t take long for fractional reserve banking to lose popularity.You would think an invention this evil which allows the creation of money from nothing would be banned. Instead it later got legalised, but for now most of the banking aristocracy of Italy fled to Germany and later to England. These were the times of Girolamo Savonarola, who advocated a return to faith and deity and condemned banking, money and material possession in general as a work of evil, quite successfully so. Florence was home to the Medici family, among other Italian aristocrats, and the Medici became the personification of the new evil depicted by Savonarola, part of the reason why they later left Florence.Lots of banks went bankrupt as a result of being too greedy, the commercial trade expansion and the demand for credit was eternally going up so there was plenty of room to misbehave. After all, you’re making a fortune printing paper! So people to some extent chased bankers away, by imposing more and more restrictions on their trade.Par example, The Warburg dynasty, originally named Del Banco family, was a Jewish banking family of Venice, and one of the families to flee to the Warburg regionof Germany, and later to London during the times of the infamous moustache man.And from this wikipedia article I quote:UBS Investment Bank was formerly known as UBS Warburg and as Warburg Dillon Read, before the merger of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC).Over 1000 years in business and counting, and you thought Snapchat was doing alright.How it all ended up in LondonThe UK of long ago was a very different landscape financially. Let’s go back to the end of the 17th century first and look at where the finance “industry” was at that stage in time.The tally stick systemBefore those days, would you take one guess what currency looked like in medieval England, for over 7 centuries? Bet you didn’t think of this: Tally stickYes, long ago this was MONEY! Only the crown had the legal prerogative to create more of it, and there was a marking system to account for every single one. It was very specifically designed to prevent people from making large amounts of profit from an interest based business and it was “forced upon everyone” by being the only form of currency acceptable for the payment of taxes. And since everyone was due taxes, there was no way around tally sticks. It was just as official as the British pound we use today.Turns out the fall of the Roman empire owed much of its cause to private accumulations of gold, and had the upside effect of making people “touchy about this sort of thing”. So the last thing they wanted was to allow the same kind of “business as usual” as 1500 years ago.What? Roman Empire now? This is a very long winded conversation on its own, but in short the Roman treasury ran out of gold to backup the physical currencies because the private accumulations gold became so immense there was none left. People lost faith in the currency and economic stability of the empire, and it slowly came apart. You know, Brexit style. In those days there was no paper currency, just good old, bronze, silver and gold coins. And for a while, salt. Soldiers were paid in salt, yes that’s right, it’s why nowadays we call it salary. Read thisThe word "salary" comes from the Latin word for salt because the Roman Legions were sometimes paid in salt. They say the soldiers who did their job well were "worth their salt."Back to late medieval England, tally sticks were the lay of the land. But why would you bother with wooden sticks? Wooden sticks are misleading from the point. The problem in the Roman Empire was that private ownership and monopolisation of currency was permitted. But the supply was fixed, limited. If you wanted more currency you had to dig gold out of the ground, melt it, cast coins and all the rest of it.It would be like someone being able to lock up all the coins and paper notes in a basement today, there may not be enough left for the rest of us. So the real key is monopoly over the issuance of currency, which is physically didn’t leave enough gold available for coins to be cast for the general population, so the government had to “improvise”. It was so bad that at the height of how bad it got, it was the government issuing fake coins, because some families got so insanely rich they owned most of the gold and kept it locked up.So the moral was: Whatever currency you use, you obviously want to make sure they are convenient for trade so you grade them, and you want to make sure no one other than the government can issue or monopolise this currency again. So sticks of wood or inscribed pearls of anything could have been used, so long as it satisfied the criteria.But the banking crowd had other ideas:The most prominent and best recorded use of the split tally stick (or "nick-stick") being used as a form of currency was when King Henry I initiated the tally stick system in or around 1100 in medieval England. He would accept the tally stick only for taxes, and it was a tool of the Exchequer for the collection of taxes by local sheriffs (tax farmers "farming the shire") for seven centuries. The split tally of the Exchequer was in continuous use until 1826. In 1834, the tallies themselves were ordered to be burned in a stove in the Houses of Parliament, but the fire went out of control setting the building afire. This event was described by Charles Dickens in an 1855 article on administrative reform.It took until 1826 for the system to be completely replaced by paper currency, but it happened nonetheless, and paper currency + coins became the norm again.English Commercial Contract Law was alteredBy the end of the 17th century, commercial contract law legalised fractional reserve banking. There was a slight “glitch” in the law that prevented any kind debt finance from existing in fractional form, and this was a problem banking had to solve.One of a fundamental qualities of a debt contract, beyond enforceability, is for the bearer on demand to be able to claim the real value. Remember what every British Pound note in your wallet says in 2016? “Bearer on demand” is a fancy way of saying “whoever ends up having the promissory note or debt contract in their hands”, essentially allowing debt contracts to change as many hands as they please.This wasn’t possible and the reasoning was simple. Legally speaking, until those days only the people directly mentioned on the contract itself had the legal right to enforce the obligation in court.In simple terms, if you and I make an exchange contract, my 3 sheep for your 2 cows, modern day debt marketing allows you to take my promise of 3 sheep, and sell it on to the market for cash or whatever. Whoever ends up owning the contract can come and loudly proclaim their 3 sheep, and if I fail to come up with them, they can sue me in court.But this had never been possible. Before these alterations to Common Law and Contract law specifically were performed, only you or I were legally allowed to make any sort of claims to this contract.It would be pretty difficult to use modern day paper money if they could only be ever be used between 2 people right? Remember, paper currency is not actually currency. It sounds stupid I know, but in reality what you hold in your hand is a promissory note of real value(or in other words a debt contract), not something of real value.So now whoever ends up having the £10 pounds, whether you spend in a shop, give it to your kid or lose it, is also legally allowed to spend it, which is in truth enforcing a claim on the same amount of “real value”.Alright, so what’s this got to do with banking?Remember how money is created “out of thin air”? That’s not really true, it’s was created in proportion to existing gold, but there’s more money created than there is gold. The ratio of “fictional” money to real gold is determined by what’s called the fractional reserve ratio. And the amount of gold you need to have to issue more money is called the fractional reserve requirement.So the bankers get to print out more money than they actually have and lend it out at interest. That’s good business. But not just yet.The idea of exchanging something fictional, like money created through fractional reserve banking, for something real world, made out of real value, voids the fundamental contractual law of consideration. According to Wikipedia:Consideration can be anything of value (such as an item or service), which each party to a legally binding contract must agree to exchange if the contract is to be valid. If only one party offers consideration, the agreement is not legally a binding contract. In its traditional form, expressed as the requirement that in order for parties to be able to enforce a promise, they must have given something for it (quid pro quo): something must be given or promised in exchange or return for the promise. A contract must be "met with" or "supported by" consideration to be enforceable; also, only a person who has provided consideration can enforce a contract. In other words, if an arrangement consists of a promise which is not supported by consideration, then the arrangement is not a legally enforceable contract. Mutual promises constitute consideration for each other. ("I promise you that I will do X, in consideration for which you promise me that you will do Y").In short, “do you seriously expect me to take your fictional money” for my very real 3 sheep? And this is the gimmick of modern banking. After issuing the loan contract to you, the borrower, modern day banks sell the contract for real money to a sister company of the bank.Because an exchange of something real occurred, legally it is deemed that the contract is valid. This could be done before, but then the sister company of the bank would hold the legal claim to your loan repayments. Had the law not been altered, they had no legal right to make any claims to your money, since the sister company name was not mentioned anywhere on the initial loan contract.This is a very real legal battle, read this for instance, a famous case of its time purposely marginalised.It’s worth noting in the modern world gold has long been removed from the equation and the fraction reserve ratio has also been increased for 2:1 to 9:1, so you in effect lend out £9 for every single £1 on your book, and generate interest income for every single one of those £9.Enter the House of RothschildIn 1798, a 21 year old gentleman made his way from Germany to Manchester and later to London, with £1.8 million pounds(in today’s money) to start a new branch of the family biz. Much like Donald Trump, he also started “with a small loan from his dad”, but unlike Trump the brilliancy of his business acumen has no equal in modern history.He was to become the wealthiest man in the world by some counts, in today’s money worth over 400 billion dollars. Bill Gates just pushed 90 billion recently, but he would barely qualify as an upstart by these standards.His name was Nathan Mayer Rotshchild, founder of N.M.Rothschild & Sons, a firm alive to this very day. Link here. Through establishing the 5 banking houses and attaining one of the most incredible stakes in the banking oligopoly of Europe, the House of Rothschild has a vast influence over modern finance, more so than anyone else in history.The inner workings of capital markets, the way limited companies work to this very day, a gigantic number of incremental improvements to the business process, can simultaneously be attributed to them. These rather bold claims are very well detailed in literature on the topic:The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, by Niall FergusonThe Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, by Niall FergusonThey modernised bonds, internationalised gold transfers by off-setting loans in between their own banks as opposed to ever needing to send out physical gold, and globalised debt instruments. Thanks to having 5 major banks in major European countries, they were the very first to give investors the ability to collect earnings from their bonds in 5 different countries in any currency of their choice, as long as the country had a Rothschild bank. And this is just one of the major stepping stones of the modern financial industries.The immense boom of the industry is more recent, as in the 1950s there were 50 - 60 banks in the entire world, nowadays there are too many to count. So all the modern day super high leverage instruments are a more novel creation, things like derivatives, and CFDs and spread bets and exotic equity and so on, in all their infinite variations.More on that from the man himself, Sir Evelyn de Rotschild here.There’s also a video on the topic, based on the book by Niall Ferguson, which was granted unprecented access to the family books and archives, by Lord Jacob Rotschild, which to this very day runs Rothschild Capital Partners in Green Park.If you’re London based, go to Green Park Station, and head straight into the park, towards Buckingham Palace, on the left hand side of the road the 10 -15h home on your left is Spencer House, the modern day headquarters of Rothschild Capital Partners.It belongs to the Spencer Family, the family of the late Princess Diana, one of the oldest noble families in England. More about them here, one prominent fun fact is that the “garden” around Althorp House, their ancestral home, has a total surface of 55 square kilometres. That’s a mighty impressive backyard.He also owns the iconic Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, partially open to the public. It’s the poster home for a lot of Buckinghamshire tours, and found on many post cards, and, fun fact, it’s the first mansion in England to have introduced electric lights. Queen Victoria visited too, and she was also very impressed. Read more here.Baron Ferdinand played host to many important guests including the future EdwardThe grounds and house were such a wonder of their day that, in 1890, Queen Victoria invited herself to view them. The Queen was, however, more impressed by the electric lighting in the house than the wonders of the park. Fascinated by the invention she had not seen before, she is reported to have spent ten minutes switching a newly electrified 18th-century chandelier on and off.The extent of their wealth and other such as the Warburg family is virtually unrivalled perhaps anywhere in human history. Have a look at their Wikipedia page, on the right hand side you can enjoy a view of more of the family homes.ConclusionMuch like Sillicon Valley was the cradle of innovation for most of the technology and the gadgets we hold in our pockets, London has historically been the cradle of innovation for finance.It took centuries and many generations of financiers to make it into what it is today, with some of the most prominent figures in London finance in chronological order being:Richard Hoare, founder of C Hoare & Co. Founded in 1672, this private bank still operates today and is the oldest bank in the United Kingdom.John Freame, founder of Barclays bank, in the 1690John Campbell, founder of Coutts, in 1692.John Houblon, first governor of the Bank of England, appointed in 1694.Francis Baring, founder of Barings Bank, founded in 1792, operational until 1995. Its asset management arm is still in operation today as Baring Asset Management.Nathan Mayer, founder of N. M. Rotschild & Sons, founded in 1811, it still operates today with over 2800 employees.There are many many more prominent figures, too many to list over the course of 3 centuries, but those are some of the pioneers of English banking, and the ones who more than anyone made London into the financial hub that it is today.This is where finance was initially modernised and matured, and in some ways the people like members of the House of Rothschild are no different than Steve Jobs or any other entrepreneur, there were simply the first to get the product right and scale it. They were the innovators of modern day finance, and they chose to be in London. Italy, Frankfurt and other locations still remain historically paramount to the banking scene.Banking in itself is a much older and wide-spread practice, but its modern form was born in London, almost three and a half centuries ago. This is a list of the oldest banks in the world still in operation. Italy’s 3rd largest bank was founded in the great year of 1472 for instance.

There's A Very Real Possibility That Trump Could Wind Up In JailIn the near term and possibly longer, Donald Trump's post-presidential options will be circumscribed by the fallout over his Jan. 6 speech egging on the crowd that would go on to storm the U.S. Capitol, including a historic second impeachment.World(c) 2021, BloombergTina Davis, BloombergUpdated: January 19, 2021 10:15 am ISTDonald Trump is likely to maintain a grip on the populist wing of the GOP.Most ex-presidents spend their time out of office playing golf, getting their libraries in order, making well-paid speeches, writing even more lucrative memoirs and biting their tongues about what the next guy is doing. Other than the golf, the road ahead for Donald Trump, a president who has never adhered to his office's norms, will be unlike any other.We know where he will not be when his term ends at noon on Wednesday - he's the first president since Andrew Johnson in 1869 to decline to attend his successor's inauguration. But there is no clear answer yet on what he plans to do next. Even where he plans to live is potentially up in the air - though Trump says he's moving to his Mar-a-Lago private club, some of his Palm Beach, Florida, neighbors are challenging his ability to live there full-time.In the near term and possibly longer, Trump's post-presidential options will be circumscribed by the fallout over his Jan. 6 speech egging on the crowd that would go on to storm the U.S. Capitol, including a historic second impeachment. If he's convicted at the upcoming Senate trial, he'll almost certainly be barred from ever running for federal office again. For now, some of Corporate America's biggest names are shunning the businessman president, "de-platforming" him on social media and cutting him off from certain professional and financial services. Tens of millions of his fellow citizens will continue to revile him, rendering the Trump brand toxic to half the country and harming prospects for his real estate, hotel and golf resort empire.But tens of millions of other Americans are likely to form a durable base of support, making Trump a political force for years to come regardless of whether he seeks the presidency again. Deprived of his @realDonaldTrump megaphone and other online platforms, the former president will have to think of new ways to mobilize - and possibly monetize - his loyal followers. Though Trump will likely be frozen out of mainstream media opportunities, he could launch his own endeavors focused on his conservative base, perhaps a Trump network to go head-to-head with Fox News or a Trump social media site to compete with Twitter.Of course, that's assuming he's not completely consumed by court battles once he leaves office. Even before the Capitol riot, he faced several lawsuits and potential criminal investigations. His wild election-fraud claims and possible incitement of the riot have only added to his legal risk. There's a very real possibility that Trump could wind up in jail.It's probably not wise to count out Trump though. Widely dismissed after his 1990s Atlantic City casino bankruptcies, he came back strongly a decade later on "The Apprentice." Then, when his ratings began to wane, he latched on to the racist birther conspiracy about President Barack Obama and built a new, right-wing audience that ultimately carried him into the White House. Even his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden was by a much narrower margin than polls had predicted.As for that presidential library, normally a gleaming monument to a leader's achievements? There are no public plans yet, but comedian Luke Thayer and former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci have made some suggestions in their spoof Main Home site, including a "Lie to America" exhibition and a "grift shop."PoliticsBefore the Capitol riot, it looked like Trump would remain the Republican Party standard-bearer, either running for president himself again in 2024 or acting as kingmaker in the GOP field. He was also expected to exact revenge against a long line of Republicans who crossed him, most notably Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who refused to try to overturn Biden's election win in the state.But some believe Jan. 6 changed all that.Georgia Governor Brian Kemp"When the Trump presidency is discussed in the near, medium and long term by anyone, all conversations will begin and end with the day of insurrection," said Republican strategist and former George W. Bush White House aide Scott Jennings. "And I don't know how you ultimately go back to the American people and say, 'Please overlook that one day because it wasn't really our fault.' Well, yeah it was. It was your fault."A Jan. 15 Pew Research poll supports that view, finding only 29% job approval for Trump, with 68% of the sample saying they don't want him to remain a major political figure in the years to come.The riot has certainly exposed a rift in the GOP. Republican House Conference Chair Liz Cheney was one of 10 members who crossed party lines and joined Democrats in impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection. Several Republican senators, including Leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested they are open to convicting Trump, which would effectively end his 2024 run before it begins. Dozens of major U.S. corporations, business groups and donors who typically back Republicans have said they will suspend or stop campaign contributions to candidates who supported Trump's challenge to the election results.But Trump is likely to maintain a grip on the populist wing of the GOP. That was evident on Jan. 8 when the Republican National Committee re-elected Trump allies Ronna Romney McDaniel and Tommy Hicks as chair and vice chair in what was widely viewed as a proxy fight over the outgoing president's role in the party. Despite the defections, the vast majority of House Republicans opposed impeachment, and nearly two-thirds did Trump's bidding and objected to state-certified electoral votes for Biden even after the violence in Washington. Recent polls have shown that most Republican voters still support Trump and don't blame him for the Capitol riot."That doesn't go away overnight," said Kevin Madden, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, said of Trump's popularity with the Republican base. "That power that he has, that connection with the most active voices inside his movement, is very real and it still exists."Social MediaAny political comeback will depend on Trump finding a new way to mobilize his base. The scale of his de-platforming is hard to overstate. His @realDonaldTrump account had more then 88 million followers before Twitter permanently banned him on Jan. 8 for breaking its rules against glorifying violence. He also lost access to more than 30 million Facebook friends when he was banned from that site indefinitely and at least through Biden's inauguration.The president still has ways to reach his most fervent fans though. The Official Trump 2020 Mobile App, which was used to register rally attendees and for direct messaging during the campaign, was downloaded 2.6 million times in the last year, with users required to input phone numbers and agree to be contacted, according to Apptopia. Nu Wexler, a communications consultant formerly with Google, Facebook and Twitter, said Trump's online footprint is still remarkable among Republican politicians."He has millions of cell numbers from events and a fundraising email list that dwarfs the rest of his party," said Wexler. "So he won't have any problem communicating directly with his supporters."But carrying his message beyond that core will remain a challenge, and some options could prove problematic. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a White House senior adviser, stopped an effort to sign the president up on right-wing social media platforms like Gab and Parler after Twitter suspended his account last week, according to three people familiar with the matter. Parler was taken offline by Amazon Web Services for promoting violence in the wake of the Capitol riot and was also previously dropped by the Google and Apple app stores.Wexler said fringier platforms like Gab and Parler wouldn't reach a broader audience the way his Twitter account did. And their echo chamber of like-minded users may bore him. "He won't get the thrill of fighting with Democrats," said Wexler.Raising money online could also be a problem going forward for a president who raised $1.6 billion in his bid for a second term, including $167.6 million that came in after the election as he trumpeted false claims of widespread fraud. Payment processors PayPal, Square and Stripe have joined the social media giants in suspending accounts tied to Trump.The Trump OrganizationThe New York real estate developer made his properties the backdrop for many of the most memorable moments of his political career. He descended Trump Tower's escalator to announce his candidacy, defended White supremacists as "very fine people" in the lobby of the same building and held a crowded fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club just before he was diagnosed with Covid-19.Trump's divisive politics have inevitably impacted his family's real estate, hotel and golf empire, much of which is located in New York and other Democratic-leaning states. In a move that reportedly "gutted" the president, his Bedminster club was stripped of the 2022 PGA Championship in the wake of the Capitol riot, with the golf body saying that holding the prestigious event at the Trump course would be "detrimental" to its brand.Trump Tower stands in New York.The PGA stuck with him longer than most. Palm Beach charity balls and social events fled Mar-a-Lago en masse after his Charlottesville remarks, and several hotels and condo buildings have exited Trump management contracts in recent years, removing the president's name from their exteriors and awnings in the process. Trump properties have also inevitably been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic along with the rest of the real estate, tourism and leisure sectors. In New York, office vacancies are rising, retail is decimated and residential rents are falling.It all couldn't come at a worse time for Trump, whose company carries $1 billion of debt, much of which he's personally liable for. Though his assets would cover that, recriminations from the Capitol riot will make refinancing a challenge. Deutsche Bank, which holds much of his debt and was the last large bank willing to do business with him, has now declared it will no longer do so, and smaller Signature Bank, on whose board Trump's daughter Ivanka once sat, twisted the knife by declaring the president persona non grata and closing his accounts. Even selling his assets to raise cash will be harder, as brokerage giants like Cushman & Wakefield and JLL have cut ties with him.Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, didn't respond to requests for comment about the state of the business and its prospects.One potential silver lining for Trump is that being president has made him even more famous than before overseas, and he may find more business opportunities in markets like Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines and India, where he retains some popularity and whose authoritarian leaders he courted while in office. His administration also developed close ties in the United Arab Emirates, where he's previously done business, and Saudi Arabia, where his company considered projects prior to his ascent to the presidency.Hussain Sajwani, chairman of Dubai's DAMAC Properties, which has partnered with Trump on two golf courses in the emirate, said he'd welcome the chance to expand his firm's relationship with Trump. "We have a great relationship with the Trump Organization and, be assured, we have absolutely no intention to cancel our agreement," he said.MediaWith a love for the limelight, Trump is expected to pursue media opportunities of some kind, whether a book deal, a lucrative role at a news channel or his own media venture.Rumors of Trump discussing an "Apprentice" revival with show creator Mark Burnett have cropped up periodically during his time in office. In November 2019, Trump took to Twitter to deny a Daily Beast report that such talks had taken place, though he allowed that it would be "a big show." It would be unsurprising if Trump did seek to revive the show - according to the New York Times investigative report that revealed his tax information in September 2020, "The Apprentice" ultimately made him $427 million, a windfall that turned his business fortunes around.With Trump now anathema to a large part of his former audience, a return to network TV is high unlikely, though former campaign adviser Sam Nunberg says the idea shouldn't be ruled out."Donald Trump is a money-making commodity in media," Nunberg said. "There will always be a space for him. He will always have a tremendous audience. Even people who hate him will watch him."Conservative media seems a surer bet, though the messy aftermath of the election has scrambled that landscape as well. Fox News' early call of Arizona and subsequently the election for Biden was seen as a stark betrayal by Trump, who began railing against Rupert Murdoch's conservative news giant and urging his supporters to switch to upstart rivals like Newsmax and One America News Network that more freely repeated his baseless claims of election fraud. But those channels still reach far fewer viewers than Fox, and there have been calls for cable operators like AT&T and Comcast to drop them in the wake of the Capitol riots.The Wall Street Journal reported in November that Hicks Equity Partners, an investment firm associated with RNC Vice Chair Tommy Hicks, the son of Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst founder Tom Hicks, has tried to raise money to help fund a right-leaning outlet to compete with Fox News. Many doubt the former president would be able to raise the kind of money needed to create a credible alternative to Fox. Politico media columnist Jack Shafer dismissed the idea of a Trump network last week, noting that the former president would have a hard time convincing cable companies to carry his channel, face withering competition from a once-friendly Fox and struggle to attract advertisers besides MyPillow.Even just getting a book published might be tough. The Obamas got a combined $65 million advance for their memoirs, and Trump would no doubt love to best that figure. If he does though, it might not be with a mainstream publishing house. Simon & Schuster, which is being bought by Bertelsmann SE, recently canceled plans to publish a book by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who sought to challenge Biden's election win and was photographed raising his fist to salute the Capitol protesters.But Nunberg said Trump is in a whole different category from Hawley. "Simon & Schuster would love to publish a Donald Trump book," Nunberg said. "That book will sell more than Obama's. And it wouldn't be 700 pages."RetailTrump has long loved to slap his name on things, buildings for sure but also adult-education courses, vodka (though he doesn't drink) and mail-order steaks (he eats his well-done, with ketchup). This trait appears to run in the family - before her father became president, Ivanka Trump built a fashion label that sold clothes, shoes and handbags at retailers like Lord & Taylor and Bloomingdale's.But, as far as mainstream customers go, that ship likely sailed a long time ago."The brand is irreparably stained," said New York public relations executive Dorothy Crenshaw. The partners and retail ecosystem Donald Trump would need to get his products on the market won't want to have anything to do with him now, she said. "I really don't see any viability."Trump-branded items were dropped from Macy's and other retailers soon after he launched his campaign with a speech promising to build a border wall to keep out "rapists" from Mexico. Ivanka's partners started pulling her merchandise in 2017 after she took an advisory role in her father's administration, with Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Hudson's Bay all dropping her label entirely. She shut down her fashion business in 2018, and now her clothes can only be found secondhand at resellers such as thredUP or auction sites like eBay.As in other areas, any future Trump retail enterprise will likely be geared towards the president's conservative base. But even maintaining the site selling Make America Great Again caps and mugs is proving difficult. E-commerce platform Shopify's decision to cut ties with Trump briefly complicated online sales, although the site began operating again over the weekend.Though the family hasn't declared any intention of expanding their consumer-facing businesses, the Trumps still hold live trademarks for products ranging from infant beddings to coffee to greeting cards. And Ivanka may find new markets for her wares abroad - the Chinese government awarded her dozens of trademarks during her father's time in office, many of which seemed suspiciously timed with Trump administration foreign policy decisions, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has pointed out.Legal ExposureOf course, none of that will matter if Trump is behind bars. He was already facing a number of legal threats that pre-date the election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team detailed several instances in which the president may have obstructed justice, and Trump was also potentially implicated in the campaign finance case that resulted in a three-year sentence for his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.Justice Department policy has shielded Trump from federal prosecution as a sitting president, but that goes away on Wednesday, and the incoming administration could revive those cases. The revelation by the New York Times that Trump took a number of questionable deductions over the years and only paid $750 in income taxes in 2016 could also spur a fresh probe into possible tax evasion.New York state authorities have been eyeing Trump as well. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is leading a probe of the president's business dealings that could ultimately result in criminal charges. New York Attorney General Letitia James is simultaneously pursuing an investigation into whether the Trump Organization inflated asset values.Trump's personal conduct is also at issue in a number of civil cases. He could soon face depositions in two New York defamation lawsuits brought by women he said were lying when they accused him of sexual assault.US President Donald Trump stops to speak to reporters as he prepared to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on January 19, 2019 in Washington, DC.Since the election, Trump has only added to his potential legal woes. His shocking Jan. 2 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked the election official to "find" him just enough votes to overturn Biden's victory in the state, may have violated both federal and state laws against election fraud. Such a case could be bolstered by additional actions taken by Trump - telling a state investigator he would be a "national hero" if he uncovered fraud in the Georgia vote, as the Washington Post has reported, and forcing the resignation of the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta for failing to aggressively pursue baseless election-fraud claims, according to the Wall Street Journal.And then there's the Capitol riot. Trump gave an inflammatory speech to the crowd that then laid siege to the halls of Congress. While some legal experts say the president's exhortations may have been too vague for him to be charged with inciting the violence, any evidence that emerges of coordination between the White House and radical groups that participated in storming the Capitol could change the picture.PromotedListen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.comPerhaps more importantly, widespread outrage over the riot has scrambled the political calculations behind bringing any case against Trump. Where the Biden administration may have once preferred to move on, it may now face growing calls to hold a former President Trump accountable in one way or another.9 Comments (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com. 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