September 10, 1981

''It's not the end of the world. I frankly don't think that the minds of the people on the issue of how they will vote will be changed, whether the election is held tomorrow, a week from tomorrow or a month from tomorrow.''

With bewilderment, rage, gallows humor and perhaps most of all a sense of deja vu, New Yorkers resigned themselves yesterday to their latest municipal crisis. As Consolidated Edison's power failure spread a mantle of chaos over the city's commercial and financial centers, thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers spilled into the streets at midafternoon to find themselves once again matching wits with an electrical breakdown. For some, it was sheer adventure. For others, it was an exercise in survival. For some, it was an opportunity to laugh. For others, it was an invitation to rail against fate. For some, it was an chance to serve. And for others, it was an opportunity to exploit.

EXECUTIVES By ROBERT J. COLE Leading Wall Street brokerage firms are cautiously forecasting that the stock market will end the year in somewhat better shape than it is now, a spot check showed yesterday. Predictions on where the Dow Jones industrial average will stand by the end of the year ranged from a bearish 880, expected by Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., to a bullish 1,017, forecast by Shearson/American Express Inc. One leading market analyst, when apprised of various other forecasts, remarked that he was surprised that the predictions were not lower. ''For any meaningful improvement in stocks,'' he said, ''we have to have improvement in bonds and the money market, and bonds are more chaotic than stocks.'' He, however, declined to offer his own prediction, or to permit his name to be used.

Angry at Wall Street's skepticism to ward President Reagan's economic program, reflecte d in high interest ratesand the plunging stock market, Republican lea ders today threatened to seek new restrictions on the financial mar kets, such as credit controls and a windfall profits tax on intere st. ''It's time indeed,'' warned Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, ''that the financial markets realize that they're playing a dangerous game.'' He said that he hoped to see a more favorable response from Wall Street not within weeks or months, ''but days.'' Meanwhile, on its first day of business after a five-week summer recess, the House rejected another effort by conservatives to stop Federal financing of legal aid for the poor. (Page B15.)

A power failure in the Wall Street area yesterday afternoon forced the New York and American Stock Exchanges to end trading 30 minutes early and disrupted business in the nation's financial center. ''We're in darkness here,'' said Charles Storer, public information officer for the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street, shortly after the explosion at the Consolidated Edison Company's East 14th Street station. ''The only light is coming through the window.'' But soon after power was restored in the early evening, spokesmen for both exchanges said that trading would resume normally at 10 A.M. today. ''We don't expect any operational problems,'' said Victor Ricciardelli, a vice president of the Amex.