Production of $100 bills at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Fort Worth, Texas.

There's an old saying that hedge funds are not so much an investing platform as a compensation plan. If so, they may be the most lucrative compensation plans ever.

The annual "Rich List" of top hedge fund earners from Institutional Investor is out and the numbers are so large that they're almost hard to conceive.

Four hedge fund managers made more than $1 billion last year. That's $1 billion in annual pay, not net worth. They make today's CEOs look like charity cases — the top hedge fund managers made 64 times the median pay of the CEOs of America's 100 largest companies. Just to make the top 25 hedge fund earners, you needed $225 million — up from $130 million in 2016.