April 4, 1990

LEAD: When the United States economy succumbs to recession, as it sooner or later must, it is a good bet that Dr. Richard T. Curtin and his colleagues here at the University of Michigan will have seen it coming before almost anyone else.

LEAD: ON Monday at sundown Jews around the world will usher in Passover and repeat a story told for thousands of years. That story, about the Jews' Exodus from slavery in Egypt, is far more than just a tale about freedom or an excuse to sit down to bowls of matzoh ball soup. It is a journey that Jews are directed to take as they follow the words of the Haggadah and are instructed not only to say its prayers and carry out its rituals but to feel as if they actually were slaves in

LEAD: President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's closest political ally conferred with a delegation of officials from Lithuania this afternoon amid signs that both sides were seeking a way out of the impasse created by Lithuania's declaration of independence and Moscow's refusal to accept it.

LEAD: Three weeks ago, the billboard at the corner of 138th Street and Lenox Avenue advertised Salem cigarettes. It now wishes a happy 85th birthday to Mother Hale, the founder of Hale House and the adoptive grandmother to innumerable abandoned and abused children.

LEAD: Treatment for Chicken Pox A widely used antiviral drug has proved effective against the only common childhood illness not prevented by vaccination. Page A23. China Adamant on Dissident China has stiffened its resistance to letting the dissident Fang Lizhi, now in the United States Embassy in Beijing, leave the country.