With very little fanfare, WZAA had become the first FM station in New York offering a format known as Mexican Regiona, which includes genres like ranchera, banda and norteña music.

The markets are in meltdown, intensifying the downward pirouette of what the international financier George Soros has called Greece's death spiral.

But to critics like the New York Times's Paul Krugman, Ryan was an obvious con man weaponizing the deficit to hamstring Obama's presidency, weaken the recovery, and snooker Beltway centrists eager to champion a reasonable-seeming Republican.

What a turn-up for the books: the prettiest boy in the seventies pop stratosphere had prematurely gone to fat.