What was going on when I was born?

There were bruised feelings on both sides last week in the policy struggle between Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan and David A. Stockman, the budget director. Treasury aides told Mr. Regan that he would have to maneuver more aggressively to defeat Mr. Stockman's advocacy of tax measures to raise more revenues because the former Michigan Congressman had forged an alliance with the Republican leaders of the Senate. At the Office of Management and Budget, officials felt aggrieved because they suspected the Treasury of leaking their internal forecasts of the economy and future budget deficits. Plainly, President Reagan's announcement Friday that he would ask for no additional taxes was a victory for Secretary Regan, the 62-year-old Washington newcomer from Wall Street, and a defeat for Mr. Stockman, the veteran of 10 years on Capitol Hill as staff aide and Representative. Mr. Stockman will be 35 on Tuesday. The news media have portrayed it as the Administration's first intense intramural dispute over economic policy, but some participants say the picture is overdrawn.

International Guidelines for Egypt's future were given by President Hosni Mubarak in his first major address since taking office in early October. He called for economic improvement at home for all Egyptians, and he affirmed Egypt's commitment to a foreign policy of nonalignment, while supporting the Camp David peace process with Israel. (Page A1, Column 6.) The American aid program for Haiti will be reshaped, according to Administration aides and Haitian Cabinet ministers who met in Washington last week. The United States will also support Haiti's request for a World Bank development study that is intended to bring Haitian needs to the attention of donor nations and private investors. The actions are part of a larger Carribean initiative announced in July by the United States, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. The cost of the American program was not announced. The United States provides Haiti with $26 million a year in food and development funds and $750,000 in military assistance. (A1:4-5.)

Five years ago, when legislation was being considered to force companies to give the Government 30 days' notice before consummating mergers, opponents argued heatedly that such a delay would prevent many legitimate corporate marriages from taking place. ''Any premerger stay provision would discourage healthy, efficient, competitive change in ownership of business in response to economic conditions and promote inefficient allocation of capital resources,'' asserted William E. Simon, then Secretary of the Treasury and previously a successful Wall Street investment banker. Despite such opposition, the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act was passed anyway. Deal makers and their Federal regulators now say the law has worked surprisingly well. Only a handful of mergers have come apart under its notification provisions, and these may not have survived substantive antitrust chal-lenges in any event. Any need to unscramble merged companies after-the-fact has been avoided, and the law is said to have been administered so as not to give significant advantages to companies resisting takeover.

The recent drop in interest rates will bring little near-term relief to many of the nation's beleaguered savings and loan associations, according to delegates attending the annual convention of the United States League of Savings Associations. This is because many savings institutions have accumulated large amounts of deposits at high rates in certificates that will not mature for months, or even years, they said. ''We're going to have to stick with it for another 30 months,'' said Russell L. Stewart, chairman of the Home Federal Savings and Loan Association in St. Petersburg, Fla., which has assets of more than $1 billion. ''Everybody has been moving into the 30-month smallsavers certificates, and they've been getting yields of up to 15 1/2 percent,'' added Mr. Stewart, who is among 4,000 savings executives gathered at the New York Hilton.

In some articles in Business Day in the past two weeks, the ranking of the Greenwich Savings Bank was incor- rectly stated. It was the 9th-largest in total assets in New York State, accord- ing to the State Banking Department, and the 16th in size nationally in total deposits, according to the National As- sociation of Mutual Savings Banks.

The United States is reported to have indicated that it will redesign its aid program for Haiti and help the Government of President Jean-Claude Duvalier strengthen its trade and investment program. The plan was described by Reagan Administration officials and Haitian Cabinet ministers who have been on an official visit here. The United States will also support Haiti's request for a World Bank development study to bring Haitian needs to the attention of donor nations and private investors. The Administration's decision on Haiti is part of a larger Caribbean initiative announced in July by the United States, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.

Will Durant, a historian and philosopher who won a Pulitzer Prize with his wife, Ariel, for a volume of their ''Story of Civilization,'' died late yesterday. He was 96 years old. A spokesman for Cedars-Sinai Hospital here confirmed that Mr. Durant died of heart failure about 11 P.M., apparently without ever learning that his wife had died Oct. 25 at 83. News of her death was kept from Mr. Durant, who had been under intensive care for three weeks after surgery. ---- Seeker of Total Picture One day in 1912, as he lay ill with dysentery in Damascus, 27-yearold Will Durant conceived ''The Story of Civilization.'' He did not get around to starting it until 1927, but when it was completed in 1975, it packaged more than 110 centuries of human history in 11 volumes.

A fight between liberals and conservatives is shaping up over the idea of luring business into cities through special investment and tax policies, which President Reagan has called the keystone of his urban policy. While the concept of ''urban enterprise zones'' drew support last year from liberals and conservatives in Congress and the Reagan Administration, disagreement over the details of how to carry out the program have since driven the two groups far apart. Internal documents disclose that some Administration officials consider the main legislative proposal, drafted by a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat, far too restrictive toward business and too expensive for the Government. Warnings From Republicans But conservative and liberal Republicans in Congress who are facing re-election next year are privately cautioning the Administration against proposing an alternative bill that would be regarded as so favorable toward business that it would destroy bipartisan support for the concept. Such a bill, they say, would invite criticism that Mr. Reagan was more interested in helping business than people.

Accompanying the decline in short-and long-term interest rates last week was the growing conviction among some analysts that the drop would not be a temporary one followed by a surge in rates to record levels. There are many who disagree, but those who expect the interest rate decline to continue often cite the growing weakness of the economy as well as the Federal Reserve's money policy. Certainly, the credit markets have been anticipating lower rates in the future, as shown by a drop in the six-month bill rate to 11.9 percent late Friday from 12.72 percent at last Monday's auction. For three-year Treasury notes, yields fell to 13.59 percent late Friday from 14.43 percent Monday, while the 30-year Treasury bond fell to 13.75 percent from 14.4 percent.

The economy turned sharply lower in October, with output, new orders and employment declining at a faster pace than the month before, according to the latest report on business conditions compiled by the National Association of Purchasing Management. The purchasing managers, who are responsible for buying the materials for their companies, said that more of the association's members reported lower production, orders and employment last month than at any time in more than a year. ''It is very unusual for such a high percentage to report that these three measures of the economy were in such difficulty during the same month,'' said Charles T. Haffey, chairman of the business survey committee of the association and vice president, corporate purchasing division at Pfizer Inc.

FROM the day that Johnny Majors became the head football coach at Pittsburgh, Dec. 19, 1972, until mid-August, 1973, he and his new staff scoured the nation for as many football recruits as they could find. They signed 76 newcomers and 67 of them showed up at preseason training camp, according to Jackie Sherrill, who was an assistant to Majors then and became the Pitt head coach when Majors left for Tennessee in 1977. That grab bag of freshmen and junior college transfers produced the nation's best single football player of 1976 - Tony Dorsett, the tailback who won the Heisman Trophy. It also helped produce the nation's best team of 1976 - the undefeated Panthers who were ranked No.1 that season. This unlimited recruiting of players also brought Pitt up from the depths of football despair to a ranking position among the nation's powers, where it is likely to remain for some time. The undefeated Pitt team, winner of eight straight games this season, was ranked No.1 in the nation in the most recent ratings by the two wire service polls and The New York Times computer analysis.

With less than eight weeks remaining before a deadline for the return of 837 Grumman Flxible buses to the streets of New York, only 99 have been returned, and company and transit officials said yesterday that the deadline would not be met. In addition, officials of the Transit Authority charged that 70 percent of the buses that had been returned - after twice being sent back to Grumman for repairs - still had mechanical problems. The developments have thrown into question what will happen to more than $20 million being held in a bank account that was set aside to pay for the buses once they were delivered. On Dec. 31, the funds in the account are to revert to the agencies that are paying for the buses.