almighty dollar, the

Money, or the accrual thereof, as considered the most important or influential thing in the world. In the eyes of these massive corporations, the rights and wellbeing of workers always come second to the almighty dollar. So much legislation and policy is dictated first and foremost by the almighty dollar.

Fig. the U.S. dollar, or the acquisition of money, when viewed as more important than anything else. Bill was a slave to the almighty dollar. It's the almighty dollar that drives Wall Street thinking.

The power of money; by extension, crass materialism. The term was used by Washington Irving in The Creole Village (1836) (“The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion”), perhaps echoing Ben Jonson’s sentiment of two centuries earlier (“That for which all virtue now is sold, and almost every vice—almighty gold”).