Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Robert Reich about some of the problems facing our economy and humanity. Those are two very big topics that could easily fill days of talk-time and we managed to scratch through it in 20 minutes or so.

Professor Reich is a wise gent who brings us closer to understanding what is needed in an ailing economy that has seen its share of economic disasters. What is needed is a good old belt tightening, it seems, and significant change in the mindset of Americans. It seems that since China and India are consuming everything in sight, it is up to us to make sue that there is going to be enough food and drink for our future generations.

We went on to discuss how the Oil Sector and Agriculture with stocks such as Potash Corp./Saskatchewan (USA) (NYSE: POT), The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MOS) and Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) are the natural leaders as they will need to bring much more product to a hungry world.

American Water Works Company sounds like an old company. And it is. The company got its start in 1886.

And now it has filed the necessary papers for an IPO.

Basically, American Water Works is a water and wastewater utility. It has customers in 32 states, as well as Ontario, Canada. In all, about 16.2 million people drink its water.

Last year, American Water Works posted $2 billion in sales and $252.5 million in operating income.

No doubt, the company has considerable competitive advantages. The capital costs are significant and the regulators are onerous. But, water is a necessity -- and this means lots of predictable cash flows.

Interestingly enough, there are 53,000 community water systems and about 16,000 community wastewater systems in the U.S. Thus, as a public company, American Water Works should have lots of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) opportunities.

The underwriters on the IPO include Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS), Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C), and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MER). The proposed ticker symbol is AWK.

The prospectus is located on the SEC websites. Also, if you want to check out more IPOs, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.