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As he damns the Athenian elite, Timon exhorts: "Bound servants, steal! Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, and pill by law." By this time, in Nicholas Hytner's new production of Timon of Athens at the National Theatre, the bound servants need no encouragement: they are encamped in small tents outside mansions, swathed in hoodies and masked-up. They prowl at the edges of the action, haunting the cast of bankers, celebrities and politicians who make up Timon's world. The details are haunting: the skyline of Canary Wharf; the effete goodie bags from London Fashion Week that hang from the wrists of Timon's entourage; the flimsy, Westminster guest pass worn by Timon's emissary to the Senators, whose own official lanyards convey instant superiority.

Hytner has staged Timon not just as an episode in the financial crisis: this is a meltdown of the British establishment played out in full view of the Occupy camp; Timon's women strut and preen in couture that Kate and Pippa might wear; his protégé, Ventidius, comes out with the same posh rubbish you might hear from gilded youth in Chelsea; Timon himself is the liberal aesthete-millionaire, dispensing patronage to the arts and short shrift to his accountants. Until things fall apart.

So now, at the very moment that Leveson, Chilcott and the Tyrie committee are crawling over the reputations of those in power, the National Theatre's corporate sponsors – which include Goldman, JP Morgan and Accenture – get to watch it all played out as Jacobean drama, and from the best seats in the house.

For Timon of Athens is not primarily about money. Marx got it right when he wrote that the play was about the "power of money". Money, for Timon, is the means of creating and lubricating a power network. He springs Ventidius out of jail with five grand, secures a marriage for his servant with 20, responds to a gift of greyhounds from a powerful contact with "fair reward".

When he goes bust, all he asks for are loans of ready money – liquidity, in banking parlance. But neither the senator, nor the toff, nor the Hooray Henry he has bailed out in the past are prepared to stump up. Neither is the state.

Timon – like Lehman Brothers – goes bust because of what appears as a liquidity crisis. But, as with Lehman, this masks a deeper collapse. Once Timon can no longer supply his social network with gallery openings, soft-porn ballet and massive overpayments for menial services, his social value is zero. Which makes the play's revival as a satire on London in 2012 all the more relevant. Shakespeare had grasped something about the crisis of his time that some politicians and economists are still not prepared to confront about ours.

In the week before Hytner's Timon opened on 10 July, Barclays lost its chairman, then its chief executive, then reinstated its chairman. It launched a PR fightback that, by accident or design, dragged the Bank of England and figures close to Gordon Brown into the line of fire, to face questions about who had leant on whom to rig Libor. The Bank of England's deputy governor duly shot down this line of inquiry, in testimony to MPs – saying that no politician had pressured him, nor had he pressured Barclays. But by now the Libor scandal had produced divisions between bankers and politicians.

Barclays had narrowly escaped part-nationalisation in 2008. In 2009, Bob Diamond managed to move a huge chunk of bad debt off the balance sheet to the Cayman Islands; Alistair Darling's tax cuts revived growth; the system was stable once again. By 2011, Barclays was leading the line for the industry to negotiate Project Merlin: a scheme to increase bank lending to business in return for the removal of the cap on bonuses. Barclays had been given the benefit of the doubt by politicians – re-admitted to the fold.

Then came the revelation that it had manipulated Libor – for the personal gain of traders between 2005-7, and for survival reasons in 2008. The slap-on-the-wrist deal it had agreed with regulators now unravelled in the face of public anger. For a few panicked days, each part of the establishment was engaged in finger-pointing at the rest. Suddenly the social standing of Barclays' bosses had – as with Timon – become diminished.

It was just the latest event in what has – since the summer of 2011 – become a "social meltdown", with the contagion just as virulent as in the economic meltdown of late 2008.

Police testimony at Leveson speaks of "a network of corrupted individuals". Criminal charges have been laid against newspaper journalists and editors. Companies charged with security at the Olympics have failed to deliver; companies charged with getting the workless into work likewise.

But there are crucial differences between Timon's Athens and the London of 2012: there is a powerful mob in Shakespeare's play, with a capable leader – Alcibiades. In the end, this leader conquers the city, is absorbed into the ruling group and, with Timon dead, society is healed. Today – in London and across Europe – it's impossible to predict a happy ending, because the nature of the "mob" has changed.

When Timon, in the wilderness, encounters Alcibiades's troops – whom Hytner supplies with baseball bats and Molotovs – he uses gold to corrupt their revolt. He urges the men to "mince" the children of Athens and the whores among them to "infect" Athenian men. They, in turn, reply frankly: "We'll do anything for gold." They surge off, behind Alcebiades, who duly triumphs.

But what characterised the revolts that have kicked off since 2008 is their hostility to leadership, and the willingness to abandon an action should it lead in the direction of hierarchy, power-games or engagement with mainstream structures. Likewise, the English riots of 2011: ultra-violent, refusing – on the evidence of the Guardian/LSE study – to be pigeonholed as revolts against policing, racism and poverty. They were multifaceted, non-ideological and largely leaderless. Hytner's mob might wear hoodies, sleep in the pop-up tents of the indignado camp, but they are textually obliged to behave as a 17th-century mob – trailing gormlessly behind the man they will put in power. The contrast between this and the real modern crowd – armed with Blackberries and Flickr streams – is telling.

What it means for the modern elite in crisis is that there is no ready supply of untarnished men and women from outside the mainstream to come and save the situtation. We've seen this most graphically in Greece, where the establishment parties declined, with fascism and the far left making giant strides. But it's a feature of many of the crisis-ridden countries: the disengagement of the young and rebellious from power itself.

Timon is – as everybody who has read the pass notes understands – a "difficult" play". It is effectively a Jacobean "city comedy" by Thomas Middleton wrapped in a character study by Shakespeare: a theatrical "shit sandwich" to go with the real ones that Timon serves to his creditors at the moment of revenge.

The play is a product of a disrupted time: Elizabeth dead, James crowned, the die cast for 50 years of religious and social conflict, London suddenly swarmed with alien Scottish capitalists on the make. The Earl of Essex's rebellion had recently subjected the city to mob rule, plague had closed its theatres, and Guido Fawkes had just been executed for trying to blow up parliament. It was a society that felt, for different reasons, as fragile as ours. It feared breakdown – not yet because of cohesive mass unrest: this would come in the 1630s and erupt into civil war in 1642. The fragility of Jacobean England lay in the fear that the elite was doomed, fragmented, at odds with culture and society.

It is in this that Timon of Athens loses its "difficulty" and becomes a parable for the crisis of the modern business elite. "There are only two stories," the journalist Murray Sayle once said: "'We name the guilty man', and 'Arrow points to defective part.'" The rest, he implied, was worthy rubbish. For the past four years, those who've tried to explain the financial crisis have tended to adopt this doctrine: looking for guilty bankers or defective parts in an otherwise functional system.

Last year, Ewald Engelen and a team of economists based at Manchester University proposed a third explanation: the "elite debacle". This they define as a non-reversible, major, complex event that feels more like a catastrophic military defeat. For Engelen it is not bankers but the politicians, regulators and their world view that are the focus of criticism. Their trademark has been hubris: "The over-confident are attracted to leadership," Engelen observes "and once in command … they are encouraged to concentrate on big-picture 'strategy', leaving tedious evidence and detail to subordinate technicians."

Timon's downfall begins from just this: he refuses to see the accounts that his steward has prepared because what's in them – insolvency – would call a halt to his life of philanthropy and power. But the play becomes an elite debacle only once the Athenian ruling caste abandons Timon. They enforce the laws of commerce against the unwritten obligations of the power network. He, in turn, serves them covered plates of "filth", hurls it into their faces, and as they flee into the troubled streets the mob joins in, showering the rich with faeces.

In Hytner's staging, Timon of Athens becomes not difficult but crystal clear: indeed, one suspects the play was only "difficult" in times of stability, certainty and upward mobility. But these are gone. For four years, the central bankers, regulators and politicians have risen to the post-Lehman crisis collectively: they've socialised losses, written off debts, injected liquidity, and printed money when there was no more left to lend. They enforced the principle of collectivity that Timon himself appeals to in the play: "O, what a precious comfort 'tis to have so many like brothers and sisters commanding one another's fortunes."

This collectivity at the top is what, up to now, prevented the financial crisis from eating through into the social and political fabric. Now popular anger has broken apart the elites collectivity. From now on, the politicians will run as fast from the tainted bankers as they do from the newspaper editors who formerly showered them with good headlines. And there may be more to come: a Barclays' internal memo that predicts its own reputational collapse will look puny once the regulators are done with others in the frame.

Bernard Shaw once wrote of Shakespeare's tranche of "problem" plays that the dramatist looked ready to start on the 20th century if only the 17th century would get out of his way. But Timon is relevant to all centuries in which formerly stable elites collapse – and ours is beginning to look like one of them. So roll up for Shakespeare's least-performed play. It's half by somebody else, and the hero disappears before the end. But the elite debacle is the only show in town.

• Paul Mason's Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions is published by Verso.

EDDIE PELLS

AP National Writer= COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Olympians should have figured out one thing by now: What they can or cannot wear at the London Games has very little to do with their fashion, marketing sense or patriotism, and a whole lot to do with rules, regulations and, of course, money.

The overseers of the Olympics are protective of their brand and rings — considered one of the most recognizable logos in sports — and what the athletes wear when they're competing has been tightly regulated, much to the chagrin of some of the games' stars.

Take Michael Phelps, for example. He recently tweeted his dismay at no longer being allowed to wear a swimming cap bearing miniature American flags on the front and back.

"Gotta love an organizing committee telling us we can't do that anymore," he said on Twitter.

But neither the International nor U.S. Olympic Committees are making any apologies. The IOC keeps a tight grip on when and where advertising and other markings can be worn at the games. After all, its coffers took in more than $2.4 billion (over the four-year period ending in 2008, for instance) in marketing rights from companies like McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

The USOC and the federations that run the individual sports follow suit, paying respect to domestic and international sponsors who more or less bankroll the entire endeavor, which, in turn, provides the funding for the athletes.

"Our objective," said USOC head Scott Blackmun, "is to be able to support as many athletes who have a chance to represent us at the Olympic Games."

Not satisfied with the support he receives, American runner Nick Symmonds resorted to selling body space earlier this year.

Symmonds, one of the most outspoken athletes on this issue, was paid $11,100 by a Wisconsin-based lifestyle marketing firm for wearing a tattoo of their logo on his shoulder. He'll need to cover it with tape at Olympics so he can conform to the IOC's detailed guidelines about logos, advertising and manufacturer identification.

"My No. 1 goal, aside from making the Olympic team and winning a medal, is to bring awareness to how many struggling athletes there are out there — and wouldn't it be nice if we could just lift these regulations and allow athletes to pursue individual sponsorships a little more freely," Symmonds said in an interview earlier this year.

Not surprisingly, Symmonds was one of the first athletes to chime in last week when U.S. politicians called out the USOC for outfitting its athletes with Chinese-made uniforms produced by American-based manufacturer Ralph Lauren.

"Our Ralph Lauren outfits for the Olympic opening ceremonies were made in China. So, um, thanks China," Symmonds said in a tweet.

It was an embarrassment for both the apparel maker — future uniforms will be USA-made — and the USOC, which was careful to say it appreciates all sponsors — even those who make clothes in China — because it is a nonprofit that receives no government funding.

"The most important thing to remember is that, unlike professional leagues in the U.S., where you're trying to decide how much goes to owners and how much goes to athletes, in our environment, all the money goes to athletes," Blackmun said. "There are no owners putting money in their pockets. It's a completely nonprofit environment. It's a different environment than the marketing environment you see in pro leagues."

The U.S. uniforms aren't the only ones causing a stir. The Spanish team's garish red and yellow outfits — designed by Russian firm Bosco — haven't gone over well in Spain. Some Spanish athletes have posted tweets making fun of the gear.

The bottom line, though, is that national Olympic committees take the best deals they can get with the manufacturers.

Bosco, which also designed the Russian and Ukrainian uniforms, is providing the outfits for free in a deal with the Spanish Olympic Committee.

"When you measure the difference between paying 1.5 million of public money and free clothes, there is no discussion," committee president Alejandro Blanco said on Spanish TV.

About 85 percent of the money the USOC makes goes back to athletes in one form or another, some to fund training, some in payments to the organizations that run their sports and some in a prize fund that awards money for top finishers at the Olympics.

Some athletes, however, see big numbers being tossed around — $4.38 billion for a TV deal with NBC, $13 million for a beer company's sponsorship package with the USOC — and wonder why they can't get a little bigger piece of the pie.

Sanya Richards-Ross, one of America's top track stars, said in a recent Twitter posting, "This is my 3rd Olympics! Haven't been pd yet! Def not my motivation!!!"

"Also wanted to be clear that one of the major issues isn't just funding athletes through revenue earned at events like the Olympics," she said. "But also changing regulations to allow athletes to receive private sponsors and display logos on our jerseys."

The issue came up in a more high-profile context earlier this year when NBA stars Dwyane Wade and Ray Allen suggested Olympic athletes should be paid and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban agreed.

"If you look up stupid in the dictionary you see a picture of the USA Dream Team playing for free for corporate America so the U.S. Olympic Committee can make billions of dollars," Cuban said. "So, if you come up with something that you own that you can give to me for free so I can make billions of dollars, I want it."

While NBA stars have lengthy and often lucrative sponsorship opportunities, the average American Olympian has a much narrower window for cashing in.

In April, 18 Olympians, including Eric Shanteau and Jessica Hardy, sued an Olympic sponsor, Samsung, that used their names and images in a promotion before getting permission. The USOC, which originally told athletes they had to opt out of the program, changed its policy and said they had to opt in. The USOC viewed the project as a chance to increase athlete exposure, while the athletes looked at it as another way the USOC was infringing upon their marketing rights.

"Their holier-than-thou attitude that the Olympics is their creation doesn't give them carte blanche to violate those who enjoy the opportunity to go," said Evan Morgenstein, an agent for some of those who filed the lawsuit and a consistent thorn in the side of the USOC and IOC. "They've created this opportunity for so many people. OK, so now you're going to take advantage of that? What kind of rationale is that?"

Of the 530 athletes who made the U.S. team, Morgenstein estimates only about 5 to 10 percent get direct contributions from Olympic sponsors. Some, then, go outside the Olympic family of sponsors, where athletes can market themselves, but with no references to the Olympics or its markings. Of course, when a viewer sees Phelps or gymnast Nastia Liukin on a Subway commercial, the connection is obvious, even without the Olympic rings.

The USOC calls this "Ambush Marketing," and says anything that devalues the Olympic brand hurts all athletes.

"I understand their frustration," Blackmun said. "But the answer is not to remove restrictions, because if we do, we can't support athletes collectively at the level we do today."

Morgenstein's response: "Of course it's ambush, because it's the only logical way for these athletes to get paid."

The athletes — at least the few who are successful enough to make some money on the side — understand what the Olympics has done for their careers. Still, they defend their right to make a living.

"It's my job at the end of the day, but at the same time, you have to remember that's not necessarily why you're doing it," said Liukin, the 2008 all-around gold medalist. "I'm doing it because I have a love for the sport. I think a lot of people can cross those two paths and get caught up in making as much money as they can. But for me, it's about having a well-rounded group of sponsors who support me and give me what I need to be at my best."