What was going on when I was born?

To have any chance of winning its war against Iran, and perhaps even to sustain the current stalemate for the next two or three years, Iraq must find a way to change some simple but potent financial arithmetic. It has to do, of course, with oil. From a peak of 3.5 million barrels a day in 1979, Iraq's petroleum production fell to 972,000 barrels a day last year, the lowest since 1958, and has crept back only to 1 million barrels a day this year, according to oil industry sources. Iran, by contrast, is pumping about 2.4 million barrels a day this month, and it did slightly better in some months earlier this year.

Governor Cuomo has proposed using at least part of an expected $1 billion in surplus funds from the Municipal Assistance Corporation for economic development in New York City. In making the proposal public yesterday, Mr. Cuomo said the money - part of a surplus expected over the next five years - should be used to establish a ''development bank,'' to be run jointly by the state and the city. He said such a bank would be preferable to funneling the surplus into the city budget for general use, which is what the assistance corporation has been doing for several years. A Letter to Koch ''I am convinced that we now have a chance to use these resources more creatively and more effectively on behalf of the people of the city,'' Mr. Cuomo wrote Mayor Koch on Tuesday in a letter that was released by the Governor's office late yesterday afternoon.

In the wired nation of the future, cable television was to be the video equivalent of the corner newsstand. Just as readers can select from an array of specialized publications ranging from daily newspapers to magazines as diverse as Field & Stream and Connoisseur, the dream for cable television envisioned scores of channels, each catering to a different special interest, that viewers could watch. But a fundamental shift is taking place in the cable industry. The notion of numerous specialized channels is giving way to a system in which a limited number of channels are aimed at mass audiences. ''We're not going to see a cornucopia of services,'' said John Reidy, a cable analyst for Drexel Burnham Lambert, a Wall Street investment firm. ''The basket is starting to look pretty slim.''

''I think they'll come back because they must be aware as much as we are that there cannot and must not be a nuclear confrontation in the world by the only two nations that truly have the great destructive nuclear capability.

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday imposed standard national rental rates for millions of Bell System telephones and ruled that after a two-year transitional period starting Jan. 1, phone rentals and sales would no longer be subject to any regulations. The commission's decision, which affects about 120 million telephones now rented by consumers and businesses, clears up one of the last major uncertainties facing users in connection with the coming breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. When the Bell System is broken up Jan. 1, splitting the local phone companies from A.T.& T., ownership of the phones will shift from the local companies to A.T.& T. under the approved divestiture plan. Only yesterday, however, did the commission determine what the phone rentals would be and rule that they will no longer be subject to state regulation. The new charges are national in scope, replacing current rental fees that vary from state to state.

An article in Business Day yesterday about an insider trading case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission incorrectly reported the status of one original defendant, Vito Rossini of Brooklyn. The charges against him were dismissed about a month ago after he agreed to give up any trading profit and consented to a court order barring future securities laws violations. He neither admitted nor denied the charges.

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. LTHOUGH the dawn was beginning to lighten the sky it was still dark in the parking lot behind the Westchester Marriott Hotel here last Sunday morning, but that did not prevent Chris Kirk, coat collar pulled up over his neck, a container of hot coffee steaming in his hand, from going from van to station wagon to panel truck to van, rubbing frost off windows, peering in, knocking, asking: ''Do you have any Windsors? Any Windsors? Got any Windsors?'' After a dozen or so stops he found two Windsor chairs in the station wagon of a Brooklyn dealer, Sam Herrup - a 1780 continuous-arm, brace-back chair from either Connecticut or Rhode Island and another of the same vintage and vicinity, a comb-back chair with remnants of 19th-century paint adhering to it. ''The paint surface is fantastic,'' said Mr. Kirk, chewing on his unlighted cigar. ''But the price? Too much for a dealer.''

Losses reported by state-chartered savings banks in New York State rose almost 50 percent in the third quarter, to an aggregate $50.1 million, from $33.5 million in the second quarter, according to the banking department. Vincent Tese, Superintendent of Banking, attributed the deterioration to higher interest rates in the third quarter, but said that despite the latest increase, the losses ''were down considerably from a year ago.'' During the third quarter of 1982, the aggregate loss was $218.6 million. Most of a savings bank's assets are low-yielding, long-term mortgages made years ago when interest rates were considerably lower. When interest rates rise, the savings bank must pay higher rates to attract and retain its deposits, even though the yield on its loan portfolio hardly rises at all. Thus, a bank's net income can erode quickly when interest rates are high.

The Kremlin broke off talks with the United States on medium-range nuclear missiles, saying it would set no date for resuming the negotiations. The action was described as unilateral, unjustified and unfortunate by the chief American negotiator, Paul H. Nitze. (Page A1, Column 6.) Moscow renewed its pledge that American missile deployment in Western Europe would be countered by new Soviet missiles targeted against the West. (A14:1-5.)

Merrill Lynch & Company, the nation's largest securities firm, lost out in the bidding to manage the assets of a huge teamsters' pension fund mainly because of a Labor Department challenge to work that Merrill Lynch had done in putting a value on business assets belonging to Allen M. Dorfman, a longtime associate of reputed leaders of organized crime. The pension fund, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund, had hired Merrill Lynch to evaluate the Dorfman holdings. Mr. Dorfman, who was killed last January a month after being convicted on bribery charges, had served the fund as its claims processor. Well before Mr. Dorfman's conviction, the fund had taken steps to buy him out. Merrill Lynch had concluded that the Dorfman assets were worth $10.75 million. By contrast, the Labor Department asserted in legal papers filed last week in Chicago, the assets were worth only $1 million. Further, the department said, Merrill Lynch had conducted itself improperly in preparing its evaluation.

An article in Business Day on Monday about the start of trading in the stock of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the new regional phone companies incorrectly reported the date on which the regional companies will pay their first dividends. It is May 1.

Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization conducted an exchange of prisoners this morning involving the release of 6 Israeli soldiers and about 5,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Army announced that the six Israelis, who were captured at an outpost in central Lebanon in September 1982, had been placed aboard a vessel in the Mediterranean, which was reported from Beirut to be a French naval ship. In exchange, Israel freed 1,100 Palestinians, who were flown to Algeria from Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv aboard Air France jumbo jets marked with red crosses. With Defense Minister Moshes Arens looking on, the Palestinians flashed V-for-victory signs as they ran from airport buses to the planes.