What was going on when I was born?

French bankers hastily began cutting lending rates this weekend after sharp criticism by the country's new Socialist Finance Minister, Jacques Delors, and an unprecedented Government move to stimulate the economy by forcing down the cost of credit. At the suggestion of the president of Credit Lyonnais, Claude Pierre-Brossolette, France's three biggest state-owned banks, Credit Lyonnais, Banque Nationale de Paris and Societe Generale, which together hold 40 percent of all deposits, said they would lower their minimum lending rate eight-tenths of 1 percent, to 14 1/2 percent, effective tomorrow. Most other French banks promptly followed suit. The reduction is greater than the six-tenths-of-1 percent cut Mr.Delors had demanded and apparently reflected the bank president's desire to pacify an irate Finance Minister who only hours before warned that dismissals would result if French banks did not support the Socialist Government's effort to prop up the economy by lowering interest rates.

High interest rates seem to be bringing the housing market to a standstill, but a handful of large real estate service companies are thriving on the largess of corporations that transfer thousands of workers and pay all costs -including the financial gimmicks often needed to buy or sell a home today. ''Companies want help in transferring workers,'' said George H. Rathman, president of Merrill Lynch Relocation Services Inc. ''They realize they have to have the right people in the job no matter what, so we expect rapid growth to continue.'' Others estimate that the industry has grown at a compounded rate of about 30 percent over the past six years. ''Depending on what day you measure,'' Mr. Rathman said, the Merrill Lynch unit is the largest or the second-largest company in the field, collecting $197 million of fees from large corporations and moving 15,000 workers in 1980. High Interest Rates Help Record high mortgage rates and the leveling, or even decline, in housing prices have helped business, according to Mr. Rathman and executives at other concerns.

As President Reagan begins a week of difficult policy decisions, White House officials are acknowledging reluctantly that one price of Mr. Reagan's vacation in California has been a display of internal rivalry and discord in the Administration that had been kept suppressed. The officials said further that the vacation seemed to have strained relations and disrupted operations among Mr. Reagan's top advisers, Edwin Meese 3d, James A. Baker 3d and Michael K. Deaver, for the first time since the President took office. As a result, there have been an unusual number of contradictory statements from them and from Cabinet members on the budget and on military spending. Mr. Reagan's monthlong vacation was the first substantial period in which the twice-daily meetings of the three aides to smooth potential differences were interrupted. The recent disarray within the Administration was thus taken by White House aides as yet another illustration of the importance of the so-called ''big three'' in maintaining order in the Administration.

Declining in enrollment, financially troubled, transformed by ethnic shifts and, in some places, creeping once more toward segregation, many of the nation's public school systems are now struggling as they open for the new academic year. In Houston, students are already back in classes, although the extensive bilingual program ordered for them by a Federal district court is not. There are some 230,000 Spanish-speaking students in the Texas schools, and the state has appealed the court's order that they all be taught in both Spanish and English. In Boston, where students are to return Wednesday, 1,500 or more teachers and aides were laid off last month in the city's attempts to bring fiscal stability to a system that has been racked by many changes, over the last seven years. The teachers are to meet tomorrow afternoon to vote either to accept the cuts or to strike, which is against state law.

On the eve of Labor Day, Reagan Administration and union officials exchanged charges today over the Administration's handling of the air traffic controllers' strike and the effect of the President's economic program on workers. In a Labor Day message today, President Reagan asserted that the goal of his economic program was ''jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs,'' stressing an issue that may be more important to many union members than the controllers' strike. But Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., asserted that Mr. Reagan's ''hard-fisted'' tactics in dealing with the controllers had demonstrated an insensitivity to the needs of labor. ''What remains to be established is, where's the rest of him?'' Mr. Kirkland said, alluding to a line in the movie ''King's Row,'' in which Mr. Reagan played a man whose legs were amputated. ''Where's the heart? And where's the understanding of these people's problems that will make it possible to have a decent resolution'' of the strike?

Congressional investigators have concluded that the Small Business Administration provided millions of dollars in improper and possibly illegal loans to farmers reporting crop losses because of drought. The Justice Department said that it had not prosecuted any of the farmers, even where criminal fraud was evident, because mismanagement by the small business agency had ''tainted the Government's case.'' The staff of the Senate Committee on Small Business has found that farmers received duplicate loans for the same crop loss, misused loan proceeds for personal expenses and failed to repay the Government when their losses were not so great as expected. The committee chairman, Senator Lowell P. W eicker Jr., Republican of Connecticut, who supervised the four-month investigation of farm disaster loans, plans to release the findings at hearings on Wednesday and Thursday.

The United States trade deficit with Japan may exceed $15 billion this year, a record imbalance that is threatening to lead to new trade frictions between the two countries. The American trade representative, William E. Brock, is asking Japan for concessions. (Page D1.)

The solidarity of the Northern Ireland hunger strike was threatened today when another prisoner was taken off the fast by his mother, and one of the organizations behind the strike reduced the level of its participation. The two separate developments, following the removal of another prisoner from the fast just two days ago, raised hope in some Government circles that there might soon be a break in the hunger strike, which has claimed 10 lives in the past four months. ''God willing, it just might be beginning to run out of steam,'' said an official in Belfast who has been closely involved in the various efforts to bring an end to the protest. The prisoners are seeking political status, instead of being treated as common criminals.

In the course of doing her job, which happens to be selling, Constance Levinson deals with horse-supply shops. She deals with fishing stores, scientific supply houses and garden centers. She talks to tribes of mail-order catalogue people, not to mention companies that rank high in the Fortune 500. Also, she is in contact with a veal grower and she sells to a casket company. One client is a store that only stocks goods that relate to unicorns. Mrs. Levinson does not sell every product that is made. She sells just one - books. She is director of special markets at Harper & Row, and one of the long-time inhabitants of a corner of book publishing that has lately drawn the intense attention of publishers of books for the general public. Though some publishers have dabbled in special sales for a long time, many publishers, just in the past year or two, have scrambled to form departments to sell to gourmet shops and balloon stores and wherever else (outside the traditional markets of bookstores and libraries) there might be an appetite for specialized titles. ''I would say this is the big new thing in book publishing,'' remarks Jana Stone, manager of special sales for Doubleday, which formed its own department in January.

The Philadelphia Eagles, who were good enough last season to have gone to the Super Bowl, are still good. Their defense in general and their pass rush in particular led them to a 24-10 victory over the Giants today in their National Football League season opener. Both teams had looked bad last week in their final exhibition games. But the Eagles had beaten the Giants 11 straight times over six seasons, and last year they won 12 games and lost 4 while the Giants were winning 4 and losing 12.

National Football League Properties Inc. routinely approved a business deal in 1978 - without doing a background check on the individuals involved - that allowed Ken Stabler to become part of a potentially embarrassing business relationship with a man who later was identified as a member of an East Coast organized crime family. A few weeks after the contracts were signed, Anthony James Romano surfaced as the owner of a company marketing 2,500 signed and numbered lithographs of Mr. Stabler's portrait in connection with a local chapter of the Easter Seals Society. Mr. Romano has been identified by local law enforcement sources as a convicted felon and a member of the Magaddino organized crime family of Buffalo. Mr. Stabler was the star quarterback of the Oakland Raiders in 1978. He was traded in 1980 to the Houston Oilers. What transpired after Mr. Romano's role in the 1978 deal became known to the league, Mr. Stabler and others, is the subject of some debate among the principals involved in the arrangement. It also is the subject of an investigation by officials of the National Football League, who have spent the last week inquiring about Mr. Stabler's off-the-field association with Nick Dudich, a well-known gambler from Perth Amboy, N.J. League rules prohibit an association between a play er and a known gambler.

Gene Michael, the New York Yankee manager who had criticized the team's owner in public, was dismissed today by George Steinbrenner and replaced by Bob Lemon. Lemon is the sixth man to manage the Yankees since Steinbrenner purchased the team in 1973, and the second in that period, with Billy Martin, to hold the job twice. Michael's ouster was prompted by his statement nine days ago that he could no longer tolerate Steinbrenner's constant threats of dismissal. According to sources in the Yankee organization, the owner was angered by what he considered Michael's disloyalty and audacity. Steinbrenner waited for the manager to offer an apology, and finally asked for one when the two spoke by telephone two days ago.