The bond rally that has sent Spanish borrowing costs to 10-month lows has distracted attention from the nation’s growing debt pile. Spain’s budget deficit probably exceeded 9 percent for a fourth year in 2012 as Europe’s highest unemployment rate, a third recession in four years and the cost of bailing out its banks offset almost all of the government’s 62 billion euros ($83 billion) of spending cuts and tax increases, according to economists at Societe Generale SA (GLE), Lombard Street Research and the Madrid-based Applied Economic Research Foundation. Total debt will reach 97 percent of gross domestic product this ... (full story)