"1 - Hartford continues to lose its industrial base, which means that more and more of its income base depends on companies whose primary business is paper shuffling.

Instead of using the clumsy "which clause" let's rename the event and follow it with a dependent clause that amplifies the added noun.

2 - Hartford continues to lose its industrial base, an economic catastrophe in the making{that is}characterized by an income base primarily dependent on companies engaged in paper shuffling."

I found this example on some grammar textbook explaining "Renaming and Amplifying the subject ".I don't see the second sentence grammatically correct because "an economic catastrophe" is appositive phrase that should be set off by a comma after "making". Also, "that is " should not be reduced or eliminated from the second clause because if we do that we're not going to have a clause . I think that something is not right in the second sentence because there's no conjunction to connect the two clause , no verb if we reduce the verb "is", and there's no clause without verb. also I feel something is not right with the punctuation .

Thank you