In their IMFS Working Paper No. 62 (2012) on "Forecasting and Policy Making" Wieland and Wolters investigate the role of forecasts, showing "how badly economists' models failed to predict the Great Recession". According to Bloomberg, the debate misses the point. In Smith's opinion, forecasts aren't the most important thing in science. A theory will rather describe things that are already known and " describe them in terms of other things that we thought were totally separate, unrelated phenomena", Bloomberg's Noah Smith goes on.
Bloomberg view: "Economists' Biggest Failure"
IMFS Working Paper No. 62 "Forecasting and Policy Making" (PDF)