July 3, 1986

Multitudes of people and hundreds of warships and majestic sailing vessels converged on New York yesterday amid final preparations for a kaleidoscopic Liberty Weekend of ceremony, spectacle and entertainment. Under lead-gray skies that forecasters predicted would clear obligingly for tonight's relighting of the Statue of Liberty and tomorrow's main Fourth of July events, windjammers and fighting ships from dozens of countries scudded through drizzle and fog, bound for berths in and about New York Harbor. A Time for Crews to Explore Many of the 40,000 vessels expected for the celebration were already riding at anchor here, the gray hulls of men o' war low in the water, the yardarms and rigging of the tall ships glistening with raindrops as crew members on liberty fanned out to explore the city's dangers and delights. Visitors also continued to pour into the city by car, bus, train and plane, and New York, like a city under siege, geared up to house, feed, transport, protect and otherwise accommodate the hordes, whose numbers have been guessed at in the realms of 7 million to 15 million. Organizers of the four-day, $30 million extravaganza billed as Liberty Weekend - a bonanza of harbor activities, street festivals, fireworks, concerts, races and other events -said preparations were ''99 percent'' completed.

The erratic and unpredictable growth of the nation's money supply over recent months has proved the last straw for a bedrock theory of conservative economics that has helped guide Government policy for two decades. Beryl W. Sprinkel, President Reagan's chief economist, will say as much publicly for the first time in an address Thursday in San Francisco, according to his aides. As one of the nation's most tenacious partisans of the theory, known as monetarism, he relied upon its tenets to make the Administration's overly bullish predictions of economic growth in the first half of this year. Monetarism bases its creed on a simply stated proposition: that the growth of the nation's supply of money - the deposits in bank accounts, the cash in people's pockets -determines the economy's future growth and inflation. Typically, the Federal Reserve Bank controls money supply through its open market activities, in which it buys and sells Treasury securities.

Governor Cuomo and the leaders of the Legislature reached agreement Wednesday night on a plan to set up a public authority empowered to take over the Long Island Lighting Company, which is struggling to open the long-delayed $4.5 billion Shoreham nuclear power plant. The agreement, announced amid the rush to adjourn the 208th session of the Legislature and begin a campaign season, would give the Governor and his appointees vast new powers, expanding the role of government, and could eventually bar the opening of the nuclear plant. Two Separate Bills The plan, in two separate bills, would establish a Long Island Power Authority, empowered to negotiate with Lilco to purchase either its stock or assets. If negotiations fail, it could then acquire the utility through condemnation proceedings or a hostile stock takeover.

Military contractors around the country, after five years of the biggest peacetime arms buildup in American history, now are girding for austerity, bitter competition and more onerous demands from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. It is not just that the military budget is level or even shrinking after soaring earlier in the decade. The broad efforts to narrow the Government's budget deficit, combined with growing doubts about the efficiency and conduct of contractors, are also resulting in major changes in the military procurement system. The stress now is on competition. Scrutiny of company practices has increased. And contractors are finding they must absorb more of the cost of developing new technologies. 'A Sustained Freeze' ''This is a watershed, largely to do with the total amount of spending,'' said Joshua M. Epstein, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. ''I don't think you'll see much growth in defense spending over the next four years; basically it'll be a sustained freeze.''

The United States and Cuba have agreed to have emissaries meet in Mexico City next week for negotiations on reviving a 1984 immigration agreement, Reagan Administration officials said today. The agreement was suspended by Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, after the United States began broadcasts to Cuba by Radio Marti, a Voice of America station transmitting from the United States and aimed at the domestic Cuban audience. The scheduled talks, which have not been announced, are to cover both issues of immigration and radio broadcasts, the officials said. Revival of Accord Expected They said they expected Cuba to agree to reviving the immigration accord, the most important agreement between Cuba and the United States. They also said there was no likelihood that the United States would halt its broadcasts over Radio Marti.