A Hawk in Treasury Boss's Future

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson makes no secret of how much he likes his job. "It scares me how close I came to not doing it," he says with a chuckle. Still, with just 15 months left before his term ends, he's already looking to the future. And it includes placing identifying bands on the legs of young hawks. A famed birder who once chaired the Peregrine Fund and the Nature Conservancy, Paulson says he stays up on his old issues, especially the populations of birds of prey. With the hawk migration upon us, he plans to attend "a number of the hawk watches" to check on their health. "Sometime in the fall of 2009 I'll be back to banding again," Paulson says. "But for a while I'm trying to band asset-backed paper," he adds in a reference to short-term debt.