The big-money ways of private equity and hedge funds once produced shock and awe. But then the credit crunch took hold and the headline deals got squashed.

Yet the funds are still sitting on huge piles of cash, and, judging from two reports today, the firms still have the capacity to astound.

Take pay. Much was made about the half-billion-dollar paydays for private equity titans like Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone Group and even more for top hedge fund mangers. But how about $300 million for someone a couple of rungs down on the food chain?

Peter Lattman of the Wall Street Journal reports that Fortress Investment Group, which manages both private equity and hedge funds, has granted $300 million in shares to one of its traders, Adam Levinson, who is just 38.

Levinson, whose annual income Trader Monthly estimated a year ago was between $75 million and $100 million, joined Fortress in 2002 from Goldman Sachs.

The package shows that even amid a slowdown, firms are still paying out huge sums to star traders and dealmakers. Are they worth it?

Fortress is publicly traded, and, late last week, a Citigroup analyst criticized the share grant as diluting existing shares.

"In our view, this may imply a lack of confidence by this senior employee related to the funds where profit sharing was given up," wrote the analyst, Prashant Bhatia. "We can't rule out additional dilutive share grants to other senior employees down the road."

In another sign that as much things change, the more they stay the same, private equity firms are increasing their exposure to deal debt, buying leveraged loans at a discount from banks.

Henny Sender of the Financial Times reports that the Royal Bank of Scotland is selling nearly $8 billion in buyout loans to the Apollo Group, the Blackstone Group's GSO Capital, and TPG.

Apollo and GSO have also bought $5 billion of debt from Royal Bank, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank, which together put up the financing for the buyout of the radio-station chain Clear Channel Communications, the paper reports.

In April, Citigroup was reported to have begun selling as much as $12 billion in deal debt.

The banks, struggling to improve their balance sheets, are eager to get the debt off their books. As Sender points out, they are willing to do so on attractive terms—lending at 80 cents to the dollar in many cases.

Beyond the discount, the advantage to the firms is that they understand the underlying business better than other investors. But is this really the time to be doubling down?