One might think that since economists did not forecast the crisis, they are useless. It would be equally ridiculous to say that doctors were useless since they did not forecast AIDS or mad cow disease. Furthermore, even if the usual forecasting is of some use, I do not believe it is the place where economists can be most useful. Policy evaluation and principled discussion of the causes of observed phenomena are, in my view, far more important.
From Gilles Saint-Paul (2009), A modest intellectual discipline: In defence of contempoary economics
